


Ties That Bind

by Interrobam



Series: A Good New Beginning//A Far Off Destination [2]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: AU: Rung is not Whirl's therapist, Autistic Rung, Awkward First Times, Banter, Body Worship, Bondage, Canon-Typical Violence, Consent Play, Dom/sub, Drone Play, Falling In Love, Kink Exploration, M/M, Non-Sticky Sexual Interfacing, Orgasm Control, Plug and Play Sexual Interfacing, Relationship Negotiation, Rung has PTSD, Sex Toys, Tactile Sexual Interfacing, Trauma and recovery, Whirl has PTSD, Whirl has Psychosis, Whirl is not Jetstream
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-24
Updated: 2016-08-10
Packaged: 2018-05-03 05:45:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 30,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5278958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Interrobam/pseuds/Interrobam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rung looked very good on his knees. Legs folded neatly beneath him, hands clasped together at the small of his back, spinal strut straight and helm tilted ever so slightly downwards. The glow of his naked spark casting shadows across the planes of his face.</p><p>Whirl could get used this view.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is a sequel to Stars Turning High, and will make more sense if you've read it, but all you really need to know is that in this AU: Whirl is not one of Rung's clients, Whirl and Rung began dating shortly after the Lost Light took off, and Whirl is helping Rung with his rehabilitation now that he's come out of his coma.
> 
> Please note that Whirl has violent command hallucinations (similar to intrusive thoughts/impulses) in this fic, which are presented in second person as in “you should do this.” If commands are triggering for you please proceed with caution. This fic will also contain mentions of past suicide attempts, past medical abuse, and past noncon.
> 
> (There is a Noncanon Pronoun version here: http://archiveofourown.org/works/5279501)

Having been thought a brief and grinding course of it himself, Whirl would never have thought of Physical Therapy as a great lead up to heavy petting. Of course, that might have been because his first experience had involved being forced into a concentrated week-long seminar with twenty strangers by the very same sludge siphoners who took his hands. Things were much different when you were spending two hours a cycle alone with your shiny new datemate staring at their increasingly nimble hands and using mandated breaks as an excuse to get tactile. Rung had some very complex doctor things to say about how “tactile stimulation is restorative to damaged neural circuitry,” and he looked _very_ nice when he was trying to mumble medical justifications for fooling around over the sound of their fans. Disheveled nerd was an excellent look on him. Whirl had offered to sweeten the cube by grading him on his manual dexterity afterwards. Rung had declined the offer quite graciously.

As Rung’s performance improved-- as he finished his peg and hole task faster and faster, drew shapes and stacked disks more accurately-- they found themselves with more and more free time. They could, in theory, leave early. Instead they found themselves quite busy with bunting[1] and giggling and tracing transformation seams until their time ran down. Ratchet made sure to let them know, in his traditionally gruff manner, that he _knew_ they were staying for the whole of their allotted slot in the secluded recreation room, instead of packing up and vacating once Rung’s exercises were completed. Whirl didn’t particularly care what Hatchet thought about their dilly dallying. The space was far more private than the datapad storage room, and bigger than Rung’s hab suite-- Whirl’s hab was still a mess, Rung refused to fool around in his office. He wasn’t about to apologise for using a perfectly good space for a fun reason. And it really _was_ such a _wonderfully_ fun reason.

“Whirl.”

Rung’s hands showed none of the hesitance of his voice, fingers still dug deep into the back of his neck, setting his plating prickling. Still, Whirl preferred safe to sorry, jerked his helm back, [[he’s realised]] broke contact with his crest [[he _hates_ you]]

“Wha?” he warbled, silver voxcoded as usual. “Wanna stop?”

“No, not that it’s just… I’m almost done, with the exercise,” he explained. His fingers did not falter in their tight steady pressure, a boon to sore cables. Whirl shuttered his optic.

“We _are_ done. We’ve been done for like ten minutes.” And bunting for eight of them, not that he was counting.

“Not just today. In general. In light of Ratchet’s most recent prognosis, with consideration towards my rate of progress, I suspect we only have three to five cycles left before he transfers me to a less intense regimen. Likely one which can be performed independently and in a multitude of less ideal conditions.” 

“Uh, okay.” Whirl didn’t really know what that had to do with the price of oil in Rodin, as they said.

“So, no more private rec room.” Oh. Right. [[he doesn’t want to be seen with you]]

“What… so what does that mean for...” Whirl gestured between his cockpit and Rung’s sparkport stiffly. He still didn’t know what to call this. [[say you never want to see him again]] Or, he knew what he’d really _like_ to call it, but wasn’t so sure Rung felt the same way.

“Well, it means we’re going to have to go back to planning our own dates,” he explained.

“Right!” Whirl barked a laugh, affecting an air of arrogance to cover his moment of vulnerability. “It’s just. Still can’t believe you’d want to get with a mecha who drops the L-bomb after two dates.” Rung laughed in turn, helm pulling away from Whirl’s own but frame kept close to his side, field buzzing.

“You get a pass for extenuating circumstances. It _was_ in the middle of a hostage situation with both of our lives on the line.” Rung smirked, and Whirl wanted to bunt him until their fragging helms fused.

“We’re quite the pair,” he muttered. “Mechen aren’t gonna know what to make of us.” 

Rung frowned slightly, eyebrows set with determination, optics focused on his own.

“They’ll make of us two mechen thoroughly enjoying each others’ company. If they think anything else, well, their prejudices are their problem. This isn’t _Golden Age_ Cybertron.” It was kind of impressive, the amount of disdain Rung could put into his voice without sacrificing its characteristically warm timbre. [[tell him you love him]] “We’re allowed to date whomever we want,” he finished, voice wavering slightly but field adamant. Whirl felt a pang of guilt. He hadn’t meant to make things so _serious_.

“So. Speaking of the so-called Golden Age. Look at us: an empuratee who rejected his function and a mecha that doesn’t even _have_ one. Could you imagine how scuffed off the council and the senate’d be if they could see us _‘facing_?” This got the reaction he’d been angling for, Rung’s eyebrows shooting up and his hand moving to cover his broad smile.

“ _Whirl of Polyhex_!”he laughed. “I’ve never been propositioned in such an insurrectionist manner.”

“You like it?” he asked, flickering his flight stabilizers in self satisfaction.

“I think I _do_.”

“Enough to accept?”

“Hmm,” Rung made a show of mulling it over, hand moving down to tap at his chin thoughtfully. “I want my third date first.”

“I’ll take you on three- _hundred_ dates, Eyebrows!” he exclaimed, arms spread to emphasize the quantity of his offer.

“My!” Rung grinned openly, optics bright. “That’s a lot of planning to do.” Whirl dismissed his doubts with a flourish of a claw.

“Worth it. So worth it. I already have a great idea for our next one. We can have Drift do some new-age seance for us. Then we’ll use his hippie connection to the spiritual zone or whatever to prank comm a bunch of Senators and Council members from beyond the grave. I bet we could even trick _Proteus_ into slithering out of whatever Primus-forgotten crevice of the allspark Starscream blasted him into. He had such a ego.”

“Whirl!” Rung seemed almost as outraged by the proposal as he was delighted, his giggling starting up again in earnest.

“Imagine it Eyebrows,” Whirl continued, arms waving animatedly as he ranted. “Proto-dross shows up expecting to be fawned over by some fanatic functionists and **bam**! Two freaks getting freaky with each other.”

“Oh my!”

“Senator Ghost comes in and we’re like: ‘Oh hey exhaust pipe, didn’t see you there. Sorry not sorry that your corrupt aft is dead and we’re alive and having hot tactile right in your face.’”

“Oh! Primus!” Rung was doubled over laughing at this point, one arm covering his goggles and the other clutching Whirl’s shoulder for support.

“Oh yeah, I’m sure you’ll be saying plenty of stuff like _that_ too. We can make a nice comfortable nest to frag on out of copies of The Grand Cybertronian Taxo-whatever and that Clampdown Bill and those drossy Promise PSAs. I’ll eat out your spark on top of his totally scrapped life’s work. Imagine it!”

“I’m- I’m imagining it and I s- swear I’m going to f- fritz my circuits lau- laughing if you d- don’t _stop_ ,” Rung managed to shout though his laughter, swatting at Whirl’s side in mock admonishment.

“Aw,” Whirl rested an arm behind Rung’s back to support the shaking mecha, optic still curved in glee. “Well, it was fun while it lasted. Guess we’ll have to reschedule political ghost exhibitionism for a later date.” Rung shook his helm, laughter subsided but splitting grin still in place.

“You’re incorrigible.”

“I assume that’s a compliment?”

“In this case? Definitely.” Rung leaned back into Whirl’s arm, glancing around the room. “We should clear out.”

“We don’t _gotta_.” Whirl huffed. “It’s our slot, we have this place all to ourselves for at least another hour.”

“True,” Rung allowed, before turning back to Whirl. “But I want Ratchet to be in a charitable mood towards me when I see him next.” Rung cupped a servo around the side of his mouth. “I’m trying to get him to clear me for interfacing,”he stage whispered. 

Whirl’s engine revved abruptly.

“Well then what the Pit are we still doing here!” Whirl lept to his feet and swept up several of the tools resting on the table in one fluid motion. “Exercise done, time to clear out!” he hollered, making a show of hopping around like his pedes were on fire. “What’s taking you so long nerd!”

Rung’s laughter was one sound Whirl was absolutely sure he would never become sick of.

\---

Boasting aside, they mucked around for a good long while before actually getting down to hardlining. 

Their third date was mostly spent talking, with a single disastrous foray into dancing that knocked over several empty chairs and left the both of them flat on their afts howling with laughter at themselves. Not a single spark was summoned from beyond the grave, senatorial or otherwise, but they still managed to have a great time. Other dates followed: mostly set at their favorite refueling spot, but sometimes taking place back in Swerves, on an alien planet during leave, at the holovid room for movie night. They became intimate slowly, in fits and starts: lying close on the floor just to bask in each other’s fields, the sides of helms pressed together, antena swishing in sync, slow passionate bunts that sent his optic sparking, Rung mapping out his body in broad strokes with his hands and his mouth, quick soft bunts that somehow felt impossibly intimate, walking down the hall with Rung’s fingers around his talons. Rung was nothing if not a patient mecha, by nature he seemed to prefer to take things slowly. Or perhaps the psychiatrist sensed-- thankfully, without speaking of it-- that Whirl needed this to happen slowly. He needed time to... readjust. Time to recalibrate what it meant-- being touched, the feeling of a field close behind him, sudden movements and unexpected motions-- in a noncombatant context. He was more than a little relieved that Rung wasn’t trying to cash the checks he’d written with his vocaliser all at once. ( _What a notice that would get him_ , Whirl thought as a corner of his processor spirited the idiom off to its logical extreme. _“Datemate Overdrawn: Insufficient Feelings.”_ ) Whirl wouldn’t have done well. 

Whirl would turn Decepticon before he’d admit it, but the prospect of interfacing Rung was… intimidating. Not like ‘facing a mecha was anything new to Whirl. He’d be hard pressed to try to pass off his interface array as _mint condition_ : his port and connector were scuffed with clear signs of use, his cable kinked and inflexible, and his hard drives hadn’t had that fresh-out-the-gestation-capsule feel in millions of years. The problem wasn’t the deed itself, it was the particular _who_ and _how_ of it.

The problem was that Rung was a fragging work of art.

Whirl knew a thing or two about craftsmanship-- had learned, during his brief second life, what it was to construct something that ticked and spun and functioned like clockwork. He had learned that the best work, the most complex and balanced systems, rarely advertise themselves as such. The best chronometers he’d ever inspected did not demand attention in the typical gaudy fashion. They were elegant, and ever so slightly odd, and when their plates were pried away and their guts spilled it revealed something perfectly constructed, perfectly made, each piece unique and in synch and enmeshed and _invisible_. They could take his fingers and they could take his optics but they couldn’t take that feeling, that rapt thrill of looking at something with a smooth humble shell hiding microcosms of gears and coils. 

Rung was that type of masterpiece, this mecha who looked stranger the longer you looked at him. He had a lithe frame: small, but without the typical sturdiness defining minibots. The cluster of kibble on his back did a fair job of hiding the fact that his proportions were distinctly _off_. Without the benefit of his feint, laying besides Whirl in the privacy of a suite,he looked almost uncanny-- eerie and at times nearly organic. Andhe was _bright_ , optics and sparkport and all, so bright that he cast shadows. Whirl marvelled at how the mecha went so unremarked upon. 

Verity had told Whirl about “optical illusions” once: pictures that humans saw one way but were really another. Even with a third-rate government-issue single optic Whirl could see the images for what they were. Apparently, organics had such cramped processors that they were constantly using shortcuts to make room for more important data. Maybe that was the trick with Rung. He gave the processor too much to handle, so it just skipped over him. But once you noticed Rung, actually _really_ noticed him, it was hard to stop. His plating was uniquely rounded, almost soft looking, the whole of his thorax bright with sparklight, his port framed by biolights, soft yellow lines glowing down his abdomen and the inside of his legs. If Whirl imagined his false kibble to be real, pictured the warm orange of his plating polished and glossy,he was the kind of mecha he would expect to see on the arm of a Golden Age senator.

Whirl wasn’t sure he’d be able to interface Rung the way he was _supposed_ to be interfaced. Softly and slowly, romantically, after lubricating his joints with premium oils from alien lands and feeding him expensive energon goodies aged for a billion years, or some dross like that. The type of ‘facing you read about in the _really classy_ romance datapads. The type of sappy slag Cyclonus probably self serviced to while listening to opera. Whirl didn’t know the first thing about that sort of ‘facing. Well, maybe he did-- he’d partaken of the mushy stuff when that was what’d been available-- but he didn’t know how he was supposed to do it. Knowledge was worthless if you didn’t have the right _tools_ to implement them.

Hands were how you were _supposed_ to get tactile with someone, after all. Your hands and your face. Thats where the sensory circuits and electroreceptors clustered, where seams and joints were plentiful. Getting tactile meant rubbing facemasks, stroking antennae, coating plating in oral lubricant, pressing fingers against (or even _into_ , size permitting)intakes. Anyone who went looking for dirty holovids and datapads would get that message. Everything was hands and faces, hands and faces. Whirl knew what to do with hands and faces. He still remembered: wrapping lips around fingers and nibbling on antennae. The feeling of pressing glossa to intake, olfactory- and electroreceptors buzzing with input, static charge building. 

Rung had beautiful hands, small and slim but so nimble and so energetic. He had an open, smooth faceplate, two antenna, an elaborate intake, and a crown of complex plating all over his helm. He could have imagined ( _had_ imagined, in great detail in fact) what he would have done with him before the operation: how he would have nuzzled his crest and strummed his fingers over the cabling of his neck. Beyond that, his imagination ran dry.

He’d gone looking for porn with mechen like him, once. It was all gratuitous shots of not-hands and not-faces, strange and lurid descriptions of mutilated frames, the unspoken but ubiquitous message that to interface with an empuratee was to be _debased_. None of the fun or chemistry or care that other vids had. None of the romance other datapads emphasied. The ‘facing was violent and brutal and more often than not unwanted. He’d stopped after the fourth slur filled datapad incited him to throw it against his suite wall. 

It wasn’t as if Whirl was one of those _sensitive_ types who got all weepy over claw jokes or being gawked at, he told himself, it was just that _no one_ could get humming when every other comment made was about how gross their frame was.

He had always believed that, if something existed, there must be porn of it. Apparently, romantic empuratees didn’t exist. (Whirl wouldn’t know. It’s not like he qualified as romantic, after all.)

Whirl refused to dwell much further than that. Rung was worldly and educated and all that scrap. He had to _know_ what he was getting into. He was a doctor [[helm doctor]] well, he was some kind of medic. He had to realise Whirl wasn’t going to be _able_ to do the stuff his colleagues probably could-- slagging sensitive medic hands.

When the time came, he told himself, thing would work out. He’d always been good at winging it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1 Bunting is the act of touching foreheads. Since not all Cybertronians have mouths, they don't attach the same significance to mouth-to-mouth contact that some human cultures do. Socially and interpersonally speaking, bunting is the Cybertronian equivalent of kissing. Bunting is common amongst both romantic and platonic partners, though romantic partners tend to incorporate more secondary actions (nuzzling, exchanging static shocks, intake contact, and fieldplay) into their bunts, while platonic partners tend to bunt longer.  [ return to text ]  
> 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rung and Whirl's first time is awkward, but awkward doesn't mean bad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brief references to past noncon in the third paragraph.

Their first time was awkward.

That wasn’t a bad thing, necessarily. Whirl hadn’t had the opportunity to have _awkward_ sex since he was a newbuild in the corps, and that had been millions of years ago. All the ‘facing he’d gotten since had been rough-- in the sense that the fighting that took place in the Pits of Kaon had been _rough_. A more accurate term might be “violent” or “brutal,” or in the words of one nurse, “medically inadvisable.” 

Whirl was used to getting ‘faced with the adrenaline of battle still screaming through his circuits, slammed against the floor or the wall, slick with energon. Whirl was used to getting ‘faced when he was overcharged off his helm, in a back room that smelled like grease and soot. Whirl was used to getting ‘faced in jail cells and washracks and bunks. Whirl was used to mechen that _presumed_ , to pity frags he hadn’t asked for, to being a dirty secret and a tryst and an I-bet-you-50-shanix-you- _won’t_. 

He wasn’t about to complain, wasn’t the kind of mecha who got their _feelings hurt_ because his one night stand didn’t want to whip out the engagement paint upon coming out of recharge to his poor excuse for a face. Rough stuff had its own appeal, especially when your only options for partners were mechen who hated your guts as much as you hated theirs, but a mecha couldn’t function on hate ‘facing alone.

Which is why it was actually nice to find himself in Rung’s suite, fumbling and twisting with their fans running ragged.

They were still quite new to each other’s frames. In a way, Rung was new to his own frame, had been slowly relearning its ways since Ratchet put his helm back together. That had been one major reason it took them so long to get under each others plating. Traumatic brain injury was, unsurprisingly, a very effective port-block. But there were more pressing concerns than Rung’s neurocircuitry-- the cramped fit of Rung’s single suite, for example, which made it difficult for Whirl to so much as sit on the berth. Rung hesitantly suggested a brisk jaunt back to Whirl’s far more spacious suite. Exhibitionist though he might be, Whirl was none too interested in having the entire ship watch them-- plating clearly disheveled, fans roaring, fields full of each other’s static-- scamper down the hallway. Rung suggested they cool down first. Whirl suggested they scrap the whole plan and just do it on the floor, which he was surprisingly amenable to. It was the work of a few minutes to retract Rung’s recharge slab back into the wall and rearrange themselves on the floor

“So...” Whirl thought he heard Rung’s voice warble, but it might have just been feedback from their dueling fans as they lay beside each other, Whirl on his back and Rung on his side. His voxcoder clicked as his optic focused on his. “Am... I c- correct in my perception that you would like to, ahm, interface?"

"Are you _kidding_?" Whirl asked incredulously, optic swelling. Rung stiffened, averted his optics in embarrassment.

"Right, sorry, too fast. Just ignore-"

"Yes, of fragging _course_ I would." Whirl growled.Was he _serious_? He hadn't had a real overload in decades, hadn’t had a decent hook up since the _Wreckers_. Did he want to ‘face the bot with the most beautiful hands and the cutest scopes he’d ever seen, who was too fragging good for this entire _galaxy_? _I haven’t been touched this kindly and this gently since before the enforcers came to kill me,_ he almost continued, but didn't.

"Oh? Good!" Rung chirped and smiled that awful obnoxious smile that Whirl swore could make sparklings bloom out of the cold dead ground. Then he glanced at his cockpit, expression turning unsure. “Would you mind directing me to the location of your interfacing array?”

“Under the ‘pit,” he replied, gesturing at the seam where his abdomen met his thorax. Of all the questions Whirl had imagined Rung might ask about his body in the midst of swapping paint, that was one of the least troublesome. Interface arrays were generally located in the frontal upper thorax, close by the spark. Whirl’s was located in a less obvious location due to his alt-- the front of Whirl’s thorax was all cockpit and reinforced plating-- pointing it out didn’t require confession to mutilation or reformatting. He slipped the point of a talon into the seam of the cover, slid it out of the way manually to make the array even more obvious. [[dig it out the whole thing out shred it]] He played a trick where he squeezed his vents so that his fans came out like a whistle. Rung chortled, covering his mouth with his servo, optics strobing with amusement. He took his hand from his face and propped himself up on an elbow, revealing his own interface array, which Whirl then proceeded to rudely stare at. He’d been sort of wondering if he would have something outdated and esoteric, but his interfacing port and connector looked fairly standard. He had more universal ports than usual-- not naturally, they had clearly been grafted on. Whirl’s voxcoder was online to ask him what kind of kinky business he liked to get into that would require _all those ports_ until he remembered Rung crossing his arm over his thorax in the medbay, _‘invasive examinations’_ he’d said.

“You look normal,” he blurted instead. Primus must have felt merciful that cycle, because Rung smirked instead of turning away or getting angry.

“Your berth talk could use some work,” he chided. “But that’s alright, I’ll admit to being… terribly out of practice myself.” He pulled his connector from where it jutted out from his fame, unspooling his cable carefully. “May I?” he asked, and Whirl beeped in affirmative. He was the one with all the fingers after all.

Unfortunately, fingers didn’t help much when he had to turn both of their connectors over _like ten times_ just to get them to fit in each other’s ports. Rung mumbled increasingly apologetic glyphs as he failed. He started babbling about visuospatial servo-optic coordination deficits as moderated by circuit pattern-- whatever the Pit that meant-- until he worked it out properly. Once they were connected they loitered nervously outside each other's firewalls, neither sure how much to request or give access to.

“Perhaps we can start by sharing a live feed of pleasurable tactile sensation and- and relevant emotions?” Rung ventured, sending an access permit along with a general burst of //question/example/no pressure// through their connection. Whirl accepted with a grateful pulse of his field, activating the permit. He expected nervousness, hoped for attraction, but what he got was… well, he didn’t really know what the Pit he was getting. The data Rung was broadcasting was scrambled, overly complex and overlapping, full of blank spaces his systems refused to parse. [[rip your cord out he isn’t real]] It took him a moment to realise what the problem was.

“Uh,” he said, inarticulate as always, as Rung’s expression fell into distress.

“Is there something wrong?” he asked, tensing visibly.

“I... can’t read that format,” he admitted, sheepish.

“Oh!” Rung ceased his broadcast immediately, optic dimming. After a moment he sent another permit. “What about now?”

Whirl tuned in to find more scrambled code, this time accompanied by a vague itching sensation that flickered on and off irregularly and an entire section that was just question marks. “Uh,” he said. When Rung’s field prickled with embarrassment he quickly set up his own feed and sent him a slapdash but functioning access permit. “Can you match this?”

Rung’s optics dimmed again, he began chewing on his lower lip, optical ridges furrowing. Whirl, cursing his crude systems, was about to suggest they call the whole thing off when Rung let out a hesitant trill and sent a third permit. This one led to a broadcast which Whirl could read, full of nerves but also with excitement and hopeful arousal. Whirl sent //thanks/grateful/good job// over the connection and felt Rung’s delight flare in response.

Whirl blocked the feeling of his spark doing an aileron roll before it could leak into his broadcast and do irreparable damage to his dignity.

Figuring out how to fit together now that they were linked up was the next challenge. Whirl wasn’t all that used to someone who wanted to _look_ at him while they did it, so he was in unfamiliar territory in terms of the geometry of his frame. They wasted a good fifteen minutes trying to see if Rung could manage straddling his cockpit-- he could, at least until Whirl moved at all, whereupon he would either fall backwards and smack the back of his helm on the floor or yank his stabilizers nearly to bending in an effort to stay on. He could keep his pedes on the ground and bend over his canopy, but that placed his guns right up against the vulnerable plating of his abdomen, [[shoot him]] and Whirl did not trust himself enough for that. It was a boon that the both of them had plenty of cord to spool out. Whirl had worried about that-- smaller mechen tended to have shorter cords and thus less range of motion when hardlining-- but he wasn’t about to ask him if he had an extender when he was _pretty sure_ the antique had ‘faced maybe five mechen in him entire functioning. At least if the frequency with which he jabbed Whirl with his sharp elbows and caught his plating on his own was anything to go by. He suggested he try at ducking _under_ his cockpit, but he found himself swivelling constantly to try to get a better view of Rung, which more than a few times resulted in him getting conked on the helm by the underside of his cockpit. If he came out of this with more module damage than he had come into it with, Whirl was pretty sure Ratchet would weld him to the nose of the ship as a hood ornament, which would be a hilarious but also terribly painful death. He suggested Rung get out from under his cockpit.

Whirl ended up reclining against the wall, thorax propped up and legs spread, Rung sitting across his lap with his thorax pressed to the side of his cockpit and his helm resting against his shoulder, Whirl’s arm keeping him close. The position constituted a bit of a strain on his spinal strut, and it made his abdomen and flight stabilisers harder to access, but it was less awkward than laying flat on his back and less taxing than sitting up straight. 

Once they’d found their position Rung used the edge he had in maneuverability to every advantage, and it was mostly out of his efforts that their interfacing resumed in earnest. Whirl had had the right idea about things. A ‘face that was awkward could also be good-- and this was _quite_ good. _Unicron_ it was good, Rung’s nimble fingers between the gaps in his armor and the seams of his plating, tracing the contours of his fuel lines and his biolights. He quickly figured out how to lift his knee so that it ground against the underside of his gun barrels, one hand exploring the path of his spinal strut and the other grabbing firmly at his canopy. Fingers threaded effortlessly between the delicate cabling hidden inside his joints, brushing cords and actuators, delicate bundles of wires. He shared the pressure of Whirl’s arm against his back, the taste and texture of his plating, the hot crackle of charge through his system. Whirl sent back every scrap of pleasure he elicited, along with his awe at how fragging _gorgeous he_ looked, glyphs of frantic encouragement and ridiculous praise that made him burst into giggles. 

It was a bit of a strain on both of them to bunt in that position-- for his forehelm to press his crest, for his glossa to trace the rim of his optical bell, for his pedipalps to explore the warm soft territory of his intake. He had to grab onto Whirl’s plating to stay in place, clinging to his shoulder as he slid forward, thorax pressed flush to the canopy of his cockpit. He pressed his lips to the lower rim of his optical bell, between his pedipalps, and tilted his helm from side to side, nuzzling the appendages against his cheeks. He pressed his lips around the ridge of metal between them, pushing his frame upwards so that Whirl lost the warmth of his sparkpoint against his windshield but gained the press of his crest to his forehelm. He hummed, sent out a playful pulse of charge between them. The nose poking against his optic felt a bit weird, but it was nothing he couldn’t imagine getting _quite_ accustomed to. They could only maintain the contortion for so long before they had to relax their actuators, but that did nothing to dissuade them from trying. 

There were still problems of stray elbows, glyphs jumbling together indecipherably, the fact that Whirl didn’t know what to do with his claws, but he hardly gave a frag. He hardly cared when his fans were roaring and Rung’s scopes were jostled halfway off of his face and their plating was pressed hot together almost bubbling with charge. As their feeds began to fritz and intermingle-- hopelessly tangled together, each packet of data impossible to trace-- Rung grabbed his stabilizers and _hauled_ himself up to press their helms together, pelvic plating grinding against the underside of his cockpit and-

It had been _ages_ since Whirl had had the kind of overload that knocked you straight into recharge. He thought-- in the groggy seconds after his frame had fallen into recharge, but before defragmentation protocols took his processor away from reality-- that that _alone_ was worth Fortress Maximus stabbing a pipe through his spinal strut. That _alone_ made their first time perfect.

Well, _perfect_ might have been the exaggeration of a fritzed out post-overload processor. 

He had, after all, awoken the next cycle-- spinal strut aching and optic irritated by static buildup-- to find that Rung had gotten his into some sort of headlock and started chewing on his finials in his sleep. Stuck in the iron grip of an unconscious mecha, with oral lubricant dripping down the side of his helm and a pede lodged uncomfortably in his side, Whirl revised his assessment from perfect to _decent_.

Their first time had had it’s share of problems, but nothing _big_ had gone wrong, nothing truly embarrassing. Nothing like, say, calling out the wrong designation in the throes of overload.

Rung didn’t do _that_ until about a month later.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whirl jumps to the worst conclusion, Rung has some explaining to do.

The cycle had been going so _well_ , too.

That morning he'd been experimenting alone in his suite and stumbled upon a revolutionary breakthrough in the field of Whirl’s-Repertoire-of-Interfacing-Positions. He had figured out that, with a partial transformation and the exploitation of an old injury that had left him with loosened back plating, he could get his cockpit above and behind his shoulders. The contortion left his thorax and helm unobstructed, and could plausibly allow Rung and him to swap charge face to, uh, optic. It didn’t hurt, but it didn’t look particularly attractive either. It sent his arms twisted at odd angles and left some of the inner workings of his thorax on display. Plus, the cockpit jutting out of his shoulders made him look like a conehead. 

He’d shown it to Rung in a careless, disparaging way that assured him the possibility of playing it off as a joke. He hadn’t expected Rung to grin and trill and leap up to bunt him with such genuine delight-- but when he did, he managed to slip pretty smoothly into bragging about what a fragging brilliant master of problem solving he was. Whirl had suggested trying it at the end of the cycle, and Rung had flickered his optics and said that that idea sounded _wonderful_.

And it _had_ been wonderful. 

For one, Whirl had gotten his first chance to be the one on top. Rung had been the one to suggest that change of pace, and had laughed when Whirl brought up concerns about flattening the smaller mecha under his armored frame. Rung assured him that he _liked_ having weight on his frame-- reminding Whirl of his strange habit of recharging with a maile blanket-- and pointed out that he was a lot more durable than he looked. He seemed more than content on the bottom, hooking his legs around his waist and pulling his helm down to bunt his with a playful trill. He sent packets of data through their connection-- the sensation of deep pressure calming his circuitry and relieving aches in his joints. 

Everything had been going great.

Until fifteen minutes later, when Rung was digging the tips of his fingers into his plating hard enough to scrape paint, spinal strut arching as the charge crackling over their connection reached an unbearable level. Until Rung had let out a high whining groan more gorgeous than anything Whirl had ever heard before, voxcoder skipping with pleas and instructions and meaningless garbled noises of pleasure. Until Rung had opened his mouth and yelped “Yes, _yes_ keep- p- please, _M- Master!”_

And, okay, so perhaps ‘ _calling out the wrong designation_ ’ wasn’t the _best_ way to describe what had happened, but it wasn’t _inaccurate_ either. Whirl’s name definitely wasn’t “Master.”

He’d had about a second to think ‘ _what the frag?_ ’ before overload hit them both, hard, and the burning release flooding his sensornet successfully waylaid his from examining Rung’s glyphs. It was a further five minutes before his vocaliser and audials were fully online, and by then Rung seemed to have slipped halfway into recharge, his field warm and placid. [[wake him up]] Whirl contemplated shaking him back online, but even if he _hadn’t_ been working on his ‘social skills’ with Dr. Skimmer he probably would’ve been able to figure out that that would be rude. 

There were two general schools of recharge. Some mechen preferred to stay online all week, and then perform one big defrag session lasting several hours. Some preferred to take quick, half hour long defrags throughout the cycle. Rung, like Whirl, was more prone to the sporadic pattern of recharge. Unlike Whirl, he also had a bad habit of not defragging _nearly_ as often as he should. Whirl couldn’t bring himself to disrupt him. Plus, he'd _also_ had a long cycle topped off by a great ‘face, so recharge sounded pretty fracking good right then, and he fell into a deep defragmentation cycle for the remainder of the night. 

Since Rung (bafflingly, inexplicably, against the will of Prima _herself_ ) tended to be most energetic in the _early_ cycle, he was awake and departing for his own hab suite at a time when Whirl could barely tolerate onlining his optic. He’d contemplated comming him, once he'd dragged himself off of his recharge slab and fueled up, but this seemed like the kind of thing Rung would want him to bring up face to face-approximation. [[comm him]] Rung had told Whirl how he wasn’t very good at telling people’s feelings based on vocalizations alone, needing cues from their fields and frame to get an accurate impression of their mood and intentions. [[comm him]] Commlines, Rung had explained, were fine for basic communication, but not serious emotion talk.

Part of Whirl was unconvinced that this counted as ‘serious emotion talk.’ Part of him didn’t even think it was even worth bringing up. Mechen said a lot of weird things in the moments before overload. That was a strange and magical time, when almost any thought that crossed the processor seemed charge inspiring. Another part of Whirl remembered the extra ports grafted onto Rung’s array, the way his cover sometimes stuck as if it had one been damaged, that he would often rub the back of his neck when Chromedome was around. _Scars in his processor_ , he’d said. When Whirl got his optic close enough to his plating he could just make out the faint impressions of a network of jagged weldlines and needle pockmarks under his paint. Rung had such a kind and clever and special and _frustrating_ mind, and the idea that some Institute grut had _dared_ to stick their needles anywhere _**near**_ it was… was...

Whirl tried to tell himself he was being ridiculous. For all he knew, Rung hadn’t even meant _Master_ -Master. Maybe he had meant it like _Killmaster_ -Master or _Roadmaster_ -Master. He assumed, of course, that Rung was not actually thinking of Killmaster _specifically_. Whirl had spent more than enough of his life dealing with that portsucker, and the possibility that he’d somehow managed to seduce his datemate from the allspark was too cruel, even by the standards of his miserable existence. So what if the mecha had been thinking of someone else? [[he hates you]] It wasn’t like this was the first time Whirl had heard someone elses’ des’ in the berth.

But Whirl had an optic for detail paired with a hyperactive imagination and a predisposition towards pattern making, and try as he might he couldn’t dismiss what Rung had said. The things that crossed his processor: torture and shadowplay and slave coding, those sounded like cheap holovid plots. How was he supposed to bring that up? “Hey Eyebrows, on a scale of 1 to 10 how mind controlled were you when we ‘faced last night?” Yes, that would go _wonderfully_. And what if he was completely wrong? [[danger he’s in danger]] He’d come off like some paranoid, jealous aft who needs to make a big deal out of everything.

Actually valuing someone’s opinion of him for once was _exhausting_.

In any case their schedules-- well, more so _Rung’s_ schedule than his-- were full enough that they didn’t get together again until that night. Rung seemed a bit surprised to get his commed request for a meeting at Swerve’s, when he accepted the invitation it was with a glyph colored with concern. Whirl wasn’t surprised by his reaction. They typically spaced their dates out by a few cycles, meeting informally in rec rooms and refueling stations instead of going out somewhere. Spending the late refueling period at Swerve’s two cycles in a row was weird, but hey, Rung had been weird _first_.

There was also the fact that he wasn’t sure if bringing up what he’d said before would provoke one of his... attacks. Being reminded of the horrible dross the Functionists had done made that happen sometimes. If Whirl’s most lurid and melodramatic fears were true, he would be better off somewhere with people who could actually _help_ him. People with calm voices who knew the right stuff to say and wouldn’t accidentally hurt him with their clumsy fragging _claws_. Rung was the one who was good at resolving things and comforting mechen. The only helpful thing Whirl could do was go back to Pre-War Cybertron and rip the living sparks out of the fragging Cogheads at the Council. But that plan required a time machine, and he doubted even _Brainstorm_ would be able to invent one of those.

They met at their regular booth, and Whirl spent the first five minutes buzzing and whirring about this and that before Rung did both of them a favor and asked if there was a reason Whirl was so eager to see him again.

“Uh,” he began, ever articulate. He hadn’t actually thought out how he was going to express his concern. [[call him a service droid]] Yeah, _no_. That could challenge “roughing up that wimpy miner” for the title of Worst Idea Ever. “So… last cycle. When we, you know, while we-”

“Were engaged in interface?” Rung interjected, tilting his helm.

“Uh, yeah.” Whirl flickered his optic. He was still getting used to how _blunt_ the little mecha could be sometimes. “You... said something kind of _weird_.” Rung’s field tightened noticeably, though his expression remained calm.

“Oh?” he prompted. Whirl felt suddenly compelled to stare at his talons.

“You kind of called me... _‘Master’_?”

“I did?” Rung relaxed his field, but grimaced and covered his face with his hand. “I’m _terribly_ sorry about that, Whirl. I hope it- Well, we certainly hadn’t discussed anything _like_ that- I mean to say- If it was disturbing to you- I’m so _very_ sorry-”

“It wasn’t really a big deal Doc,” he laughed, holding his talons up in supplication. Rung’s frantic apologies were making Whirl feel like scrap for even bringing it up, maybe even _worse_ than he would have felt if he had dismissed it entirely. “It was just kinda weird, you know? I’m having a great time and then all the sudden you, uh, you got me thinking that you’re fantasising about swapping paint with _Killmaster_ or something. Not that that’s a big deal. I mean, it’s maybe kind of a big deal. Just not the _biggest_ deal. I would kinda think, ‘woah, what’s Killmaster got that I don’t,’ you know? I mean, uh-” he hesitated, not sure if he should mute his voxcoder before he could start babbling.

“Whirl,” Rung cut in, voice gentle. “It was merely force of habit, I assure you.”

“Force of habit,” he repeated, field roiling with unease.

“Yes I…” Rung ground his voxcoder and lowered his voice. ”All of my recent adventures in interfacing-- before joining the Lost Light of course-- had involved a… certain amount of powerplay.” Whirl continued to stare.

“So… are you saying… mechen were making you...” he trailed off uncertainly, talons jittering. Rung’s expression flashed from confusion to realisation to distress too quickly for him to react.

“Oh no no no, willingly!” he said, perhaps _shouted_ , antenna flicking with embarrassment. “Willing power exchange. It was all consensual.”

“Okay.” On one claw, that was a relief: Rung hadn’t been forced into anything, or at least hadn’t been _reminded_ of being forced into anything while they were ‘facing. On the other claw, Whirl was suddenly having a conversation about Rung enjoying kinky sex with a bunch of other bots before he met him. Which he'd not exactly seen coming when he asked for this meeting. [[call him shareware]] Although, in retrospect, he wasn’t sure why he _hadn’t_ considered that possibility. “Okay, but you said- what did you say it was cute... _‘I’m a little out of practice’_?”

“Well, I am,” Rung ex-vented, embarrassment coming back into his field. “I haven’t had time for a _relationship_ since- oh dear, since before the war began. All of my interfacing excursions since then have been quite casual-- at play parties, kink related gatherings, the occasional fetish club.”

Whirl’s optic cycled rather wide at _that_. “How in the Pit did you find those with a _war_ going on?” he asked. Rung rolled his shoulder.

“The war was easier on me than it was on most. While I often travelled close or into war zones for my job, I rarely saw combat. Most of my time was spent stationed in isolated bases which had relatively steady access to resources, in the company of numerous fellow scientists, many of whom did not have much to do for leisure. Comfortable but bored mechen will find any number of things to do to entertain themselves, especially when they are naturally creative. Groups were formed to help mechen explore their mutual interests together. Some of those interests involved interface.”

It took Whirl a moment to put all of that together. Once he did, his antenna practically rocketed to attention “Doc,” he vented in glee, “are you trying to tell me that Kimia had a _secret kinky nerd sex club_?”

Rung snorted (which filled Whirl’s spark with a flurry of affection) and smiled (which turned said flurry into a veritable blizzard) before answering. “I’m a bit puzzled as to why you find the idea so outrageous. Despite functionist propaganda to the contrary, it remains a fact that a proclivity towards science does not annul the ability to build charge. Prima, have you even heard the kind of talk that goes on in the Labs?” 

Whirl considered this. It was true that Brainstorm was hardly discreet about his interfacing proclivities. He’d just never imagined the jet _in action_ , as it were, with another mecha. He certainly hadn’t imagined that mecha being Rung. 

“The type of play that went on wasn’t flagrant, in any case,” Rung continued. “It wasn’t as if mechen were linking up during work hours and getting tactile in the halls. Well, as far as I noticed. I wasn’t the most active participant. I mostly drew my partners from a small pool of experienced and trustworthy colleagues within the group. Discretion is very important to me, and I don’t typically run very high charge. But when I _was_ motivated to pursue overload, either by myself or with others, it was within the context of fantasies of power exchange.”

“You’re so used to calling mechen that kinda thing in the berth that it just... slipped out?” Whirl hadn’t meant to sound that doubtful, but he was more than a little embarrassed at having completely missed what now seemed like a blaringly obvious answer.

“Yes.” Rung’s smile fell into a grimace. He looked like he was about to start on another flood of unnecessary apologies. “And again, I apologise quite sincerely, I wasn’t-”

“So, you like being called _Master Doctor Eyebrows_ , eh?” Whirl cut in by way of distraction. He wasn’t good at telling mechen to stop saying ‘sorry’ without it seeming like a threat. “Or can you take it, but not dish it out?” Rung’s optics flickered briefly.

“I... typically take the submissive role. That is what I find most cathartic. I am _able_ to play the dominant role, but it isn’t very satisfying.”

“I dunno Eyebrows, you sort of struck me as the _bossy_ type in bed. You’re always telling mechen what to do with themselves.” Certainly it was true that, between the two of them, he had taken the lead more often. But it was also true there was the problem of Whirl’s claws, and Whirl’s nerves, and more or less the whole mess of Whirl’s being, to consider there.

“Which is exactly why I find _submission_ so gratifying,” Rung explained, shifting his fingers in a familiar gesture. “I make my living helping mechen sort out problems, prescribing activities, making complex plans, sorting through emotional baggage, giving advice, helping to absolve irrational guilt. The _last_ thing I want to do to unwind at the end of the cycle is more of the same. Therapy all day at the office, and then more therapy in the berth?” He affected a grimace to show what he thought of _that_ prospect. “Even if I didn’t find the idea morally disturbing, it would be simply _exhausting_.”

“What about, you know, power fantasies and scrap? Don’t mechen usually have those when they’re… you know…” Whirl gestured rather bluntly to Rung’s diminutive frame. Then, feeling perhaps he had not been direct enough, continued “ _runts_?” Rung chuckled at that.

“I can see how, from the perspective of others, I might seem relatively powerless. But it is my experience that I have enormous power, and with it enormous responsibility.”

“What kinda scrap do you like?” Whirl blurted, and even he was unsure why he'd done so. _Curiosity killed the ‘copter_.

“What kind...?”

“Kink wise. What steams you up?” 

“Oh, no, please don’t think I’m dissatisfied with-” Rung was trying to slink back into apologising, where he _clearly_ had the home field advantage. Not on Whirl’s watch! [[hit him]]

“Come on Doc! What gets you revved up and humming? What kind of filth would you get down to when you showed up to a Kimia Fetish Rager? Not that I’m asking for a blow-by-blow, who’s-who itinerary but, you know, in general.” Rung tilted his helm slightly, seemed-- after a moment of disbelief-- to give the question genuine thought.

“I... appreciate the opportunity to surrender control to someone whom I trust. I do a lot of work monitoring my behavior and my field and my expressions, not just in a professional capacity but as a function of who I am. I appreciate someone who can break me down into what some might call ‘ _baser needs_.’ Someone who can overcome my composure. I enjoy the break from responsibility and worry. I enjoy the feeling of being valued and protected. I enjoy serving, I enjoy protocol, I enjoy making myself desireable towards my partner, and meeting their needs, and b- being-” Rung trailed off, optics dimming, and worried his lower lip.

“Yeah?” Whirl prompted. “What else?”

“Why are you asking?” his voice had shrunk somewhat, his field wary.

“Huh?” 

“Do you find…is it _amusing_ to you?” 

“Amusing is... not the word I’d use,” Whirl said, unsure why his datemate had suddenly gone cold. [[laugh in his face]] “It’s more like… it’s pretty fragging _hot_ is what it is.” 

That statement seemed to come as a shock to the smaller mech, his optics brightened noticeably and his antennae perked.

“Are you…” his optics flickered behind his scopes “interested in that sort of thing?”

“What, the power stuff?” Whirl curved his optic into a crescent of amusement. “Who _wouldn’t_ like having a cute thing like you at their beck and call?” Rung’s fans roared to life before he could clamp his vents shut. Ooo, that was a new and promising development. “I bet you look real good on your knees, eh? Work good there too, I figure.” Whirl teased. “And that _service_ thing, I’d like to get a _hands on_ demo of that.”

“Good!” he shouted-- so suddenly that even _Whirl_ started-- slamming his hands onto the table and drawing a few stares. His optics burned bright and his fans whirred audibly, despite his earlier attempts to smother them. “G- good, let’s do that- I mean let’s talk about it first- I don’t even know- we haven’t even exchanged safewords or talked hard limits or triggers or contracts or boundaries or toys or-”

“Woah woah woah, hold up Rung!” Whirl laughed, holding his claws up against the deluge of information. “That’s a little _too_ freaky _too_ fast for me.”

“I’m sorry, Primus, I’m sorry I j- just became- you’ve- it’s flustered me and- I’m sorry I’ll-” Rung stammered, his field flaring with embarrassment.

“It’s okay Doc, I’m fine with you getting excited!” he said, rushing to cut off the looming spectre of yet another litany of apologies. “I just…” Ugh, he was going to sound so fresh-out-the-ground. “I don’t really know much about this stuff Eyebrows, I’m usually a log-in-log-out kinda mecha. The Wreckers didn’t have any fancy clubs to-”

“I can help,” he interjected, and his optics were still keen, keen and bright as ever. “I can teach you, we can- we can figure it out together.” An grin threatened to overwhelm his face, he resisted it more or less successfully. Rung seemed to be trying to downplay how excited, even giddy, he was. Perhaps he was trying to avoid pressuring Whirl. Whatever his motive, he was doing a dismal job hiding his enthusiasm, but somehow that only endured him to Whirl even more.

“Yeah, let’s do that” Whirl said with far more confidence than he felt, and Rung practically _glowed_.

At least this time when Whirl asked himself what he'd just gotten himself into, he was pretty sure the answer was ’a pit of a good time.’


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Lets Talks About Risk Aware Consensual Kink, Baby” A Multi-Part Essay by Rung of The Pious Pools.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Minor eye gore mention.
> 
> Noncanon Pronoun Chapter Here: http://archiveofourown.org/works/5279501/chapters/12875383

Rung had suggested they put aside an entire half-cycle to discuss interfacing.

It wasn’t-- he had explained, as he’d retrieved a datapad with his schedule from subspace-- a conversation to have in such a short time and at such a distracting venue. His antennae had been flicking to and fro, a motion Whirl had came to recognise as an outwards sign of an inward struggle to not start rambling away on the topic at hand. When Rung had opened his schedule, however, he’d abruptly realised he had lost track of time, and was due for a meeting. He’d excused himself, and by early next cycle he’d sent Whirl a cheerful comm message notifying him that he had picked out a block of time that should work for them both. His message had also contained directions to Recreation Room 214, which he’d gone ahead and reserved. 

Whirl had considered sending back a playful accusation that he’d lied about being ‘naturally disorganised.’ Rung’s difficulties with parsing tone over comm, and the fact that Whirl had seen the messy nest of scrap and datapads that Rung called his hab suite, led him to delete the composition shortly after opening it.

Whirl was not at all sure what to expect out of a half-cycle long interfacing discussion. He had some ideas, of course. Said ideas mostly involved Rung, smeared with graphite and edible paint, tied to a berth, purring his designation with dimly lit optics. Said ideas might’ve been better described as _fantasies_. Fantasies which Whirl highly doubted would actually pan out (but what if they _did!_ ) considering it was _Rung_ he was thinking about. The psychiatrist made no mention of bondage or roleplay the next time Whirl ran into him, except to confirm that he had received his comm and found the arrangements amenable. He seemed to have been serious about not bringing the topic up until the arranged time. [[you imagined it]] So for a while they fell back into their normal, comforting routine. [[it didn’t happen]] Rung gossiped and laughed and chattered, Whirl did his best to respond in turn, his chronometer anxiously counting down the cycles and his processor filled with images of the other bot on his knees.

 

If Whirl had been banking on his fantasies becoming reality, he would have been very disappointed by the scene that actually greeted him upon entering Room 214.

The room was substantially smaller than the one the Med Bay had on retainer. It contained a dozen or so desks, a podium with a holoprojector to one side, and a large slate screen at the far end. It looked like a classroom. Not even a porn-vid classroom, where buffed-to-a-shine recruits would stay after Interfacing Education Class to perform hands on experiments with each other. An actual, boring, academy style _classroom_. 

At least Rung had changed the setup of the room a bit. The desks had been moved to the sides and back of the room, leaving a large patch of floor empty. The psychiatrist sat on the floor in front of the slate, a stack of datapads beside him. Rung perked up when Whirl opened the door, waving frantically, as if Whirl could have possibly missed the only other mecha in the room. Whirl immediately found space in his spark to forgive him for the charge-depleting choice of setting.

Whirl strode towards his partner. “Feels like I’m back at the academy,” he said as he lowered himself to the flood and folded his legs, crossing them at the ankle. “You’re not gonna make me drop and give you twenty, right?” he asked, shuffling his knees a bit to find the precise position that would distribute his weight comfortably. 

“Isn’t giving orders supposed to be _your_ job? Not that I would be able to give you twenty of _any_ physical exercise.”

Whirl revved his engines suggestively. “Oh, I’m sure I’d think of _something_ to do to exercise your frame.” Rung gave him a look that suggested he was about to shoot something just as dirty, if not dirtier, back-- then he just hummed and flashed a smile.

“You explained in earlier conversation that you do not have extensive familiarity with D/s practices, correct? I’d expect that much of our future discourse on the topic would be guided by the particular kinks we’re interested in exploring together, but in terms of a foundation of knowledge-” Whirl could tell Rung was struggling to stop himself from just blurting out everything he knew at once. It was fragging adorable, and if Whirl wasn’t afraid he’d get lost within the first five minutes of the monologue he’d encourage him to let it rip.

“I know the basics,” he cut in. “Before you get busy you’re supposed to negotiate: talk about what you want to do, how much damage you wanna take, what you’re prepared to dish out. Sometimes you gotta set safewords for when you wanna say something out of character.” He shrugged, stabilizers wobbling with the motion. “It’s basically normal ‘facing, just with secret codes and extra bells on. I haven’t been invited to no fancy frag clubs, but I’d say I’m past the tutorial stage.” 

“That’s a decent foundation, certainly,” Rung nodded, antenna perked. ”You mentioned safewords, are you familiar with the spectra system?”

“The... what?”

“The _spectra system_ ,” he said, glyphs recited precisely and clearly, “sometimes called the fire system? It’s sort of a standardized set of safewords based on the color of flame at different temperatures. When-”

“Oh _that_.” Whirl snorted, cutting the other mecha off. “I know _that_ dross! Red means ‘keep that up.’ Yellow means ‘watch it pal.’ Blue means ‘back off or you’re scrap.’ That’s what you’re talking about?” 

Rung made an odd little motion with his helm-- half shake, half nod.

“I generally use yellow in a more neutral capacity, as a signal that my partner should check in with me, but the rest of it is accurate. Would you say you’re comfortable using the spec- the color code? With red signifying ‘please continue,’ yellow signifying ‘please check in,’ and blue signifying ‘stop now’?” 

“Comfy as a cassette in a dock,” Whirl declared, which got another amused hum from Rung. 

“You mentioned negotiation,” he continued, his hand rising to his sparkplate and tapping it absently, “but not hard and soft limits specifically. Have you come across those terms?” 

Whirl waved his claw dismissively. “Pretty self explanatory,” he scoffed, which meant ‘no.’

“Hard limits are activities you do not wish to engage in, lines which should never be crossed.” Rung explained, cutting through Whirl’s bluff inelegantly, not that Whirl minded. “Soft limits are things you do not normally wish to engage in, but which could possibly appeal to you under specific negotiated conditions.”

“‘No way’ versus ‘Eh, maybe’?” Whirl summarised. He lowered his flight stabilizers slightly, a sign of ease and relaxation. [[hide]] He hadn’t been quite sure what to expect out of Rung is Kinky 101, but it seemed that most of what he could expect to be doing is chatting.

“Yes.” Rung thought for a moment, optical insignias furrowed. “And… I also noticed your timeline of events didn’t include aftercare. Once a _scene_ \-- the ‘in character’ part, as you said-- is over, it’s good practice to schedule a period of soothing activities to ease out of the scene mindset. Generally cuddling and reassurance are sufficient for me. A solvent cleanse or hot oil bath might also be helpful after more intense play. I have more information in my _dossier_ \-- that is, a sort of general profile from my time at Kimia-- about aftercare needs in case of... exceptional circumstances.” Rung’s pace faltered there, the brisk clip of his lecture easing to a stop. [[ask him]] The therapist reset his voxcoder with a heavy click. 

“Any questions?”

“Do you brains call it the _spectra system_ to be _purposefully_ pompous, or are you just totally unaware of how gloss you sound?” Rung’s face shifted from eerily strained to familiarly ‘put out,’ to Whirl’s relief and delight.

“Well, what do _you_ call it?” he asked petulantly.

“I dunno,” he shrugged, “‘the kinky code color thingy’?”

“Terribly inelegant.”

“Gets the job done, doesn’t it?”

“Do you have any _serious_ questions?” Rung replied, in what Whirl was beginning to recognise as an evasive maneuver he pulled when he didn’t have a good enough comeback. The rotary wondered if the half cycle precaution was more because they’d have to much to cover, or because Rung hadn’t expected himself to be capable of condensing his enthusiasm into explanations of reasonable length.

“Yeah, what’s the fastest way from A to B,” he said. “Where A,” he marked a point in midair with a raised talon, “is yammering about vocab, and B,” he raised his other claw to indicate a second point some distance away, “is me and you playing ‘facey interrogation’?” 

That got small laugh out of Rung, though his field stayed steady.

“I suppose the most expedient way would be for us to construct and compare profiles on what we do and do not want out of ‘playing facey interrogation’.” Rung answered, flickering his optics with no small amount of cheek. “While I have an old dossier you can peruse, it might be better if we exchanged our preferences _simultaneously_. That way there will be no pressure on either of us to fudge our limits based on our partner’s fantasies.” 

He turned his helm slightly, shifting through his stack of datapads with a serious expression. “We can’t expect to rely on checklists alone, but I _do_ have a datapad with a fairly comprehensive questionnaire we could each fill out. It would be a good way to begin a dialogue.” He lifted two tablets in triumph, passing one of them to Whirl. “Would you like a stylus? I have a magnetic holster you can use.” Whirl shook his helm, tapping the tablet and refocusing his optic as the screen lit up. [[crack it in half]]

An index popped up immediately: Basic Information, General Experience, Limitations and Triggers, and Aftercare Needs were listed under Section One. Section Two only had one subheading: Kink and Roleplay Checklist.

“Yeesh Doc, you’re giving me test anxiety already,” he snorted. Rung looked up from his own tablet, where he had _already_ started tapping away at a somewhat intimidating pace.

“It’s not a test Whirl, there are no right or wrong answers. You need only be concerned with answering _truthfully_.” He smiled, warm and reassuring [[take his dentae out]] his optics aglow behind his gawky scopes. Whirl felt his spark flip. Sometimes he still couldn’t believe this cute little fragger was interested in _him_. “Anything you aren’t familiar with, or on which you have no preference, you can leave blank. When we sync we will each get a copy of the other’s relevant answers. We can discuss them then, depending on our results and your curiosity.” Whirl huffed and turned his attention back to the survey (before the impulse to lean in and bunt his date mate’s silly face could overpower him). 

The first section was all open answer, which had always been Whirl’s _least_ favorite. He scribbled his responses in short sloppy glyphs. Most of the questions didn’t even really apply to him, he thought. Some of the items were outright _ridiculous_. What limitations? What aftercare? What _triggers_? He was Whirl of Polyhex, he had no known weaknesses! 

...Something told him Rung would be very unlikely to actually buy that. He put down some plausible sounding lines to hedge his bets. Rung might well figure him out, which would probably lead to well-intentioned pestering, but that sounded a whole lot like future-Whirl’s problem. All told, he went through that section fairly quickly and with minimum excitement. Whirl was feeling pretty smug about his pacing until he spared a glance at the little progress bar at the bottom of the screen. Apparently, despite the more complex organisation of Section One, it did not even constitute a third of the total survey. The checklist must’ve made up the bulk of the profile. Thinking it over more, Whirl saw why this might be. If something existed, there were probably Mechen out there somewhere getting off on it. Compiling a complete list of possible kinks could easily be the work of eons.

When Whirl _did_ get to the second part, he found it to be surprisingly sophisticated in its organisation considering that-- comprehensiveness aside-- it was basically a laundry list of deviancy. Each item had two subsections: one for the act performed _by_ him, the other for the act performed _on_ or _to_ him. Within each subsection he could rate his level of desire, and of experience, with regards to the act. There were additional boxes you could check to indicate that an item was a hard limit, a soft limit, or potentially triggering. Poking around further revealed that a double tap to an item title pulled up a little popup with a definition-- and occasionally a diagram-- to explain the act. A swipe downward revealed a settings menu from which he could adjust the layout of the survey, as well as switch the order between Alphabetical and Random. [[pick random]] He picked Random.

As Whirl moved further into the survey he found that, when some items were rated moderate or higher interest, several sub items would come up to be rated in much the same way. An interest in Overload Control lead to Control via Software, Control via Willpower, Overload Denial, Overload on Demand, on and on. Thankfully, if he put down that he had no interest in an item, or marked something as a limit, the datapad would move on to the next activity without further ado. Once he had the hang of it, it was pretty straightforward. Some of the items were a little bizarre ( _Lecturing_ , which Whirl couldn’t imagine _anyone_ besides Fragnus getting off on), or oddly tame ( _Massage_ , which he nearly laughed when he came to-- with his claws it would be more like Bladeplay). A few items weren’t even possible for Whirl-- usually due to his alt and the whole _empurata_ business-- so they automatically rated no interest. 

Then he came to Optic Gouging, and felt his antenna snap back against his helm. He remembered suddenly-- cold dirty floor and shouting and pressure on the lense of his optic and _creepy, the way it looks at you_ and _get it out get it out get it_ -

Whirl reeled in his field before Rung could have a chance to pick up on his prickling unease. He checked his internal readouts, a reminder of where and when he was. He vented and looked down at the datapad. [[do it]]

Optic Gouging. To Other: Mild Experience, Little Interest. To Self: Extensive Experience, No Interest, Hard Limit. He hesitated over the Trigger button. 

“Hey, Doc?”

Rung made a noise of acknowledgement, tapping his tablet a few more times before looking up in expectation.

“Let’s say, hypothetically, if I marked one of these things with… oh, say, those silly trigger flag things...” he trailed off, hoping Rung would follow him well enough to save him some embarrassment.

“If, hypothetically, you do flag something as triggering,” he said, with fond and somehow almost deferent smile, “I swear on my spark that I will not ask you to justify, explain, or even acknowledge the reasons why you did so.” He turned back to his datapad and tapped the screen a few more times before adding “You are, of course, welcome to supply me with information about such things if you feel it would be helpful to you, but there is no _need_ to.”

Whirl wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so he just went back to his datapad.

A few other items stood out to him in similarly unpleasant ways, but he was able to tamp down his reactions with rhythmic venting and repeated checks to his readouts. Dr. Skimmer had taught him the former, Rung the latter. Whirl reminded himself to tell Dr. Skinner that Rung’s method was way better. 

Luckily, the majority of the survey was trigger free, and neither his ego nor Dr. Skimmer’s standing in his mind had to take a major hit. 

Even better, between the bizarre or boring items there were a whole lot of acts which Whirl found _very_ appealing. Some were kinks he had considered before-- in some cases he had considered them _extensively_ , with the accompaniment of a charge mirror. When Exhibitionism came up, so did the idea of Rung mouthing at the barrels of his guns in front of a crowd of onlookers. He tapped Very High Interest so hard the screen distorted a tad. There were also acts which he’d never considered before, but which caught his attention and appealed to him immediately. Intake Gags were something he’d never used before, but they rated High Interest when he imagined Rung’s jaw held open, oral lubricant dripping from his lips, his talon sliding over his glossa. 

By the time Whirl had completed the final item, his fans were running conspicuously. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Whirl waits for things to get to the good part, and Rung is under the impression that they've already reached it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Noncanon Pronoun Version: http://archiveofourown.org/works/5279501/chapters/13557499 )

“Whirl?” Whirl’s helm snapped up, optic refocusing on the other mecha. He had continued to fixate on his tablet even after his survey was completed, processor occupied with simultaneously muffling his fans and straining his audials in the hopes of catching Rung’s running. He’d been immersed in the task of determining if the faint whirring he could make out was real or a hallucination. So focused on what was there, he hadn’t noticed what was missing: the sound of Rung’s stylus tapping next to him. [[soft]] “Are you ready to synchronise?”

“Sure,” he grunted, tossing his tablet casually to the floor in front of him. Rung placed his own tablet next to Whirl’s, clicking the thin button on each datapad’s side, which prompted a progress bar to appear on both screens. 

“It should only take a few moments,” Rung muttered, leaning back and resting his hands on his knees. He seemed quite pleased by the sight of the two flimsy datapads. Whirl couldn’t quite imagine why, it all seemed so _anticlimactic_. “While we wait,” Rung chirped, “do you mind doing some preliminary sharing? Safewords, titles, limits, triggers?”

Oh good, Eyebrows had instantly zeroed in on his least favorite topics. [[he can hear you]]

“Won’t you get that scrap when,” he waved a talon at the tablets in front of them. Rung’s optics darted to track the motion, then settled back on the lower rim of his optical bell. 

“Yes, but I’d _still_ like to discuss them in our own words, before the results come in.” His mouth turned downward just slightly. That misplaced concern again. “You won’t be asked to explain or justify anything.” Whirl huffed dismissively. “I will happily go first.” Whirl considered. This seemed like the kind of thing Rung could get adamant about, and there really was no stopping him when he got _adamant_.

“...Yeah, fine, brief me.”

“Safewords first then, I suppose?” he asked, voice chipper, as he turned his optics back to the datapads. “The Spectra System, the Color Code that is, works well as a base. That was our standard set of codes on Kimia. I find that much of the time, unless its been specifically covered in negotiation beforehand, a simple “stop” or “no” works just as well in scene as during normal interface. All that aside,” his hand rose back to the edge of his sparkport, his knuckles tapping a steady beat, “I like to have personalised safewords as well. I follow the school of thought that the best safewords are suitably _charge dampening_. Not outright infuriating or disgusting mind, just something you really don't want to hear during interface.” A glance towards Whirl’s optic, then back at the tablets. “When my dominant needed a safeword as well-- or during the few times I acted as the dominant myself-- the safeword I gave my partners to use was _Xienna_.”

“The Petrex polity?” Whirl asked.

“Yes. I’d... rather not explain.”

“Well, now I know where I’m _not_ taking you for vacation,” he joked, which got another sly glance from his datemate. “Anyway, all that junk sounds good to me.”

“Do you have a personal safeword?” Rung asked, this time turning his face wholly to Whirl. “I know some people find having multiple safewords redundant, but I tend to feel that there can never be too many safeguards.” Whirl considered. He’d only put the color code on his form, but “blue” wasn’t an all that uncommon word. It might be good to have something that would stick out. [[ornament]] No.

"I guess _reveille_ would fit. Nothing quite so charge depleting as being thrown out of defrag to run aerial drills before the sun’s even out."

“So, if I needed all action to stop immediately, I would say blue or reveille? And if you needed the scene to halt, would you feel comfortable using blue or Xienna?” he asked.

“ _I_ won’t need the scene to stop,” Whirl scoffed. Rung shot him an almost _dangerously_ withering look. Whirl felt the plating of his shoulders rise indignantly. “Alright, fine, yeah. Blue. Xienna. Reveille. I’ll use them.”

“Good!” he bept. “There’s that sorted.” He hummed quietly for a moment, knuckles slowing their beat against his plating, before continuing. “I do quite enjoy being called epithets, but I generally prefer to start out with something that has my name somewhere in it. ‘Drone Rung’ as opposed to ‘Drone.’ I’m _very_ fond referring to my partner with honorifics though, it very much helps me to get _en scene_.” Another brief pause before his optics focused sharply and expectantly to Whirl’s. “Do you have any title preferences?”

Whirl tried to dredge the memory of what he’d scribbled on his survey out of short term. He hadn’t been very creative. “ _Master Whirl_ sounds nice.”

Rung hummed, giving a small shake of his helm. “While I agree that it has a certain cadence to it, I’m a bit of an old fashioned submissive. I don’t throw _Master_ around until I’ve felt someone has _earned_ that title.” 

Whirl whistled sharply, the noise quickly dispersing into a clattering laugh. Finally an opportunity to be the one doling out significant _looks_. “Doc, the only reason we’re here is because you couldn’t _stop_ yourself from calling me Master.”

“Accidentally!” Rung chirped. The slope of his brows indicated _reprimand_ , but the way his antennae were twitching revealed his embarrassment. “Putting my…”

“Froidian Slip? Whirl offered. Rung made a discomfited face. Whirl suddenly remembered that the orange bot was quite possibly the _worst_ person, in the known galaxy, to use that phrase around. “Uh-”

“Slips of the glossa _aside_ ,” Rung continued on gracefully. “I feel most comfortable _starting_ with something else. There are many options: Commander, Pilot, Controller, Driver, Captain, and Lord have always been popular ones.”

“Mechen still use _Lord_?” Whirl’s optic widened. “Even with ‘Lord’ Megsy stomping around?”

“You’d be surprised the enjoyment some derive from using politically volatile terms.” Rung’s optical ridges rose to signify his own incredulity at the situation. “There are some mechen who even wish to be called _Prime_.” 

“Besides Rodders, you mean?” He cackled, and Rung looked almost pained by the effort he was putting into not joining in. Whirl decided to take mercy on him. “What about Sir?”

“No, not Sir.” He turned his helm, but did not seem significantly shaken. “Bad associations.”

“Hmm... Controller, then?”

“Yes, that should work beautifully!’ he exclaimed, clasping his hands together. “But, ah, on the topic of bad associations...” Rung trailed off, inventing deeply a few times, field stilling seriously. “Medical play in general is a hard limit for me. Any type of medically based roles, equipment, or environments have very strong possibilities of triggering me. The use of magnetic slabs for movement restriction is another hard limit. While I enjoy bondage, I do not wish to have my arms restrained against my sides. Complete immobilization is a soft limit. It is usually, but not exclusively, unpleasant. If the immobilization is slowly built up to, after thorough negotiation, it can actually be enjoyable. Additionally, due to the nature of my job, it’s important that any markings from play are easily hidden or quick to heal. It is also important that any sort of ‘public’ play be done amongst a separate population.” Whirl’s antennae perked in interest at that.

“Population as in… _species_?” he shook his helm incredulously. “The helm doc section of the Code must be a real doozy if it won’t even let you fuck in front of your fellow Cybertronians”

“Oh no, nothing that extreme!” Rungs hand separated and opened in supplication. “Just no one on The Lost Light.”

“ _No one_?” he whined. Well, there went the possibility of inviting Rewind to film them. Or Brainstorm to- wait. His opic flattened in suspicion. “But isn’t Brainstorm _already_ wise to your kinky ways? Isn’t _anyone_ who was in the Kimia Kink Club?” 

Rung emitted a displeased hiss.

“ _Technically_ yes, but that was only possible because I did not treat the mechen who actually lived in Kimia. I was a psychologist _on_ Kimia, but I wasn’t a psychologist _for_ Kimia. Everyone there was a colleague. It’s _different_ on the Lost Light, especially with so few therapists for so many potential clients.” He trailed off briefly into a hum [[ashamed of you]] “I need to have a public persona, and this persona must be kept as neutral as possible. PDA must be kept to a minimum. Gossip cannot be risked.”

“I’m not saying you’ve gotta let your freak lights blaze all the time!” Although that _would_ be pretty steamy. “I’m just sayin’, why not involve the mechen who _already_ know your dirty secrets?” Rung’s mouth pulled into a frown and he shook his head.

“I would need to have _absolute_ confidence that the other party would be appropriately discreet-- even under the influence, or if given reason to resent you or I. As of right now, none of the Kimia veterans onboard meet that criteria.”

“We don’t get planet leave all that often.” Whirl tried, perhaps not particularly hard, to keep the disappointment out of his voice. He’d really been looking forward to showing his shiny new datemate, and all the cute noises he made when they ‘faced, off.

“No, but there’s no reason we can’t invite voyeuristic friends to indulge our exhibitionist play via long distance vidchat or holoprojector,” he suggested. Whirl thrummed thoughtfully. He couldn’t say he had any such friends on speed-comm, but he was fairly confident a good trawl through his contact list would dredge _someone_ up. Even if no one on his end was interested, the idea that _Rung_ might want to show him off to his own network was doing much to restore his enthusiasm. “Your turn.” Rung’s voice, sudden and teasing, shook Whirl out of his reverie.

“No known weaknesses, Doc!” he declared, puffing his plating confidently. Rung took this opportunity to reassert his rightful place on top of the significant-look-giver hierarchy. His field was dense with skepticism. Whirl huffed and crossed his arms, tapping at the crook of one elbow with his talons. “Fine, I’ll spill. I don’t want any optic gouging, that’s-- it’s _blegh_ ,” he not-quite explained. “I’m not into being called ugly or dirty or whatever, that’s also dross.” He paused, meaning it as show but accidentally finding himself genuinely thinking the subject over. “...Nothing up my intake. I mean, I like it when we mash our intakes together, but nothing like a finger or a gag or whatever. Touching my rotor casing is hot, but don’t mess with the blades. And... that’s it?” Another pause. “Yeah, that’s it.” Whirl begrudgingly allowed that Rung could be on to something with this talking-things-out-also dross. Considering all he’d written for the actual survey was ‘nothing that can snuff a spark out.’ He ground his voxcoder, was contemplating making a joke when a small chime trilled out. Rung’s mouth broke out into a grin as he picked up his tablet. Whirl’s shoulder hitched to attention, he pinched his own tablet between his talons and brought it closer to his optic to confirm that, yes, the synchronisation was complete.

“The program should have eliminated all of the items which neither, or only one, of us were interested in,” Rung chirped, already swiping and tapping his way through the results. “Now, there are several ways we can go through this-”

“Fast way.”

Rung flickered his optics at Whirl’s hastily made proposal, but his field remained fond “...but the _fastest_ would be to sort by level of matched interest and focus on the top results. Say, the first ten or so?” Rung’s stylus skittered over the surface of the screen, tapping various glyphs. “We should be able to jump directly into using this information to envision possible scenes, seeing as we’ve already covered limitations.” 

“So what’s our _to do_ list look like?”

“Well, let’s see.” Rung uncrossed his legs, ignoring Whirl’s or perhaps missing Whirl’s joke, and rose to his pedes. Tablet in the crook of one arm, stylus in the opposite hand, he turned to the large slate on the wall and began scribbling glyphs onto it’s surface with sharp, precise strokes. “First we have Dirty Talk-- now that’s a rather wide category so if I expand it,” he paused to tap his datapad, “we have worship, begging, praise, degradation, name calling, possessiveness...” as Rung chattered he copied the subcategories onto the slate. Beneath each one he drew the glyph for his designation, the glyph for Whirl’s, and between them an arrow to indicate who would perform the action on whom. “Next is Special Attention, then Overload Control, Irreciprocal Stimulation which is-- ah good, both ways-- Display, Teasing, Protectiveness, Bondage-- another broad category but we’ll probably want to start slow with that anyway-- Sparkplay, and finally Ownership-- specifically undisputed.” 

Watching his partner step back and scrutinise the slate, moving some of the glyphs to ensure adequate separation of each item, Whirl wondered if Rung had ever been a professor. He certainly sounded like one, if you could ignore his subject matter. And if you didn’t, well, maybe this _was_ turning out like a pornvid style classroom [[he has his back to you]] Rung was a good size to bend over a desk. A very good size. The tips of his pedes would barely touch the fl-

“Are there any scenarios that come immediately to mind?”

Whirl flickered his optic. “Uh.”

“Relating to the list, that is.”

“Oh.” He considered the question. His mind was unusually quiet all the sudden. He’d _told_ Eyebrows he didn’t test well [[the ceiling]] “Uh.”

“Any self servicing fantasies, for example?”

...Primus, what the dross did he self service to again? Emulators, mostly. Sometimes memories, scenes from vids or datapads. He liked the _idea_ of all that original roleplay scrap, but that was hard to come up with, and the last thing he wanted to do when purging charge was to get all introspection-y.

“You know what would be _really_ paint bubbling, is if _you_ told me _your_ self servicing fantasies.” Ha ha, nice save. Whirlybird lives to evade questioning another day.

“Are you _sure_?” Rung asked, face drawn with concern. “I know it’s considered good practice to begin with the submissive’s fantasies, but considering the disparity in our levels of experience-” Ah, of course. Rung was trying to point out that he was liable to frag everything up. 

He probably wasn’t. 

He could’ve been. 

Maybe he was trying to _gently_ point out the fact that Whirl would never be able to rock his world like those stylus clickers at Kimia had? His optic flicked to the board, to Rung.

“You’re too embarrassed to share all the naughty details, eh?” He cackled like static over a faulty connection. “Guess I’ll just have to...” He ground his voxcoder to belie his hesitation, scythed his talons against each other. 

He’d just _barely_ gained confidence in touching Rung with his claws. Even after millions of years dealing with the things, he didn’t have perfect control over them. It would be all too easy to get worked up, squeeze just a bit too tight, crumple Rung’s unreinforced plating, tear his exposed cables. His optic darted across the lines of his frame to the soft glow of his sparkport. When he’d rated Sparkplay he hadn’t thought about the... inadequacies of his servos or his intake. He’d been thinking about-

“What if you touch your spark?” he blurted. “And I watch you? No touching. Uh, no touching each other.”

Rung made an encouraging sort of trill [[patronizing you]], turning to write the suggestion down. He drew a line with his stylus, connecting the described scenario to both Sparkplay and Display.

“Would you want to self service as well? Before, during, or after this?” 

Too embarrassing. Too distracting.Too much work. “Just watch.”

Rung nodded slightly, drew a line to Irreciprocal Stimulation.“Perhaps, if you find it appealing to do so, you can instruct me in how to touch my spark, and deny me the opportunity to overload until you have been satisfactorily entertained?”

Whirl assumed the sound of his engine roaring to life would clarify that he did, but apparently not, since Rung was looking at him with the same gently expectant expression as before.

“Yes,” he clarified, and Rung attached both Overload Control and Dirty Talk to the scenario.

“There’s five categories covered already!” he whistled cheerfully. “I’d say we’ve quite earned ourselves a break. Would you like to refuel together before coming back to think of another scenario?” His antennae perked, then laid flat.

“Fuel sounds good but... what’s wrong with that one?” He waved his claw towards the slate [[he hates you]] “I liked it.” 

Rung quirked his helm to one side curiously.

“Nothing’s _wrong_ with it. It’s quite appealing and not at all dissimilar to fantasized scenarios I have used to enhance my own self service in the past. It’s just nice to have multiple scenarios to choose from.”

“Yeah, but _you_ promised me the _fast lane_.” 

“If that’s your preference” Rung vented in fond exasperation. “We’ll go refuel, and then we’ll come back…” Whirl’s antenna perked back up

“And then?” he prompted. Rung leaned in towards his optic, trumped by Whirl in height even as he stood and he sat.

“And then...” Rung purred, mouth spread into a mischievous, eager grin “...we can begin discussing _timelines_ and _aftercare protocols_.” His voice was warm with genuine thrill, his optics practically sparkling at the prospect. His facial ampullae were glowing, a galaxy of blue stars twinkling across his cheeks.

Primus Purging Charge in the Pit this was going to be a _long_ cycle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had to put this fic on the backburner for the past few months because I was consumed with Grad School applications, but now that everything's been submitted I am free to throw myself into it once more! 
> 
> As always, reviews are dearly appreciated, as they are my biggest source of both motivation and inspiration.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rung puts on a show, Whirl starts to get the hang of things. Longer than usual because I just couldn’t stop myself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Noncanon Pronouns Here: http://archiveofourown.org/works/5279501/chapters/13973422

As it turns out, Rung looked _very_ good on his knees. Legs folded neatly beneath him, hands clasped together at the small of his back, spinal strut straight and helm tilted ever so slightly downwards-- Whirl would not have guessed it possible to appear so _dignified_ kneeling at someone else’s pedes. He looked graceful, disciplined, experienced. Whirl felt like he was holding someone else’s bottle [[smash it]] of septuple-distilled vintage vosian engex. Had he known what a picture Rung made, he probably wouldn’t’ve been so quick to tease him about it a week ago. 

_Pits_ , he vented sharply, a mecha was not supposed to get fragging _intimidated_ by the sight of their datemate on the floor. He should be swaggering around, giving orders, just like they planned out. But there he was, standing in his suite, just boggling at him.

“Whirl?” His designation was spoken quietly. Rung did not lift his optics off the floor [[the jaw kick him there]], though the angles of his arms lost their sharpness as his actuators loosened. Whirl’s antenna twitched. If even _Rung_ was getting bored, he’d definitely been staring too long.

“Ever heard of a _dramatic pause_ , Eyebrows?” he joked, scuffing his pede on the floor to cut into the quiet and disguise the echoing in his voice.

“We don’t have to start just yet, Whirl.” His face remained kind-- fond and understanding-- as his gaze moved from the floor [[disgusted with you]] to his optic. “We’ve accomplished plenty this cycle. That’s why we spent an hour apart once we’d finalised the scene, after all-- so that we would have a chance to cool down and reflect on-”

“No!” he snapped, the plating on his back lifting defensively. “I wanna do this, I’m all Red[1] for it.” He ducked his head and hunched his shoulders, pacing anxiously in front of the smaller bot. “I’m just… tryna figure out how to say this scrap in way that doesn’t make me sound _ridiculous_.” Rung considered his dilemma with a soft drone. Then his optics flickered decisively, and in a single fluid motion he relaxed his arms and bowed his thorax, sinking down into a low bow until his forehelm was nearly flush to the floor.

“Controller,” he asked in a voice that sounded like charge burning through lines, “will you permit this humble drone to wear his collar?”

Of course when he said it it sounded like fragging poetry. Whirl stopped pacing, steeled himself. _Come on Whirlybird_ [[wrong wrong everything wrong]] _you’re supposed to be the one in charge here._

“Yeah. Uh, you _may.”_

Rung pushed himself back up, one arm supporting his frame as the other rifled through a compartment in his chest. He retrieved a band of metal, a collar from his personal collection, lightweight but sturdy. Very suitable [[not enough your claws right through it like gel]]-- Rung had assured him-- for a first-time foray into bondage. It snapped into place around his neck. 

“And the lead, too,” Whirl added, belatedly. Rung dutifully reached back into his compartment, retrieving a length of mesh cordage with a magnetic clip on one end and an adjustable loop on the other. The clip he placed against the front of the collar, the loop he laid across his palm, lowering his helm and lifting his arm in proferrence. Whirl slipped a talon into the handle, fumbling with it until it was snugly secured at the base of his servo. As he fiddled with the lead Rung reassumed his prior kneeling his position, snapping his compartment shut.

Ok, there was _that_ sorted. And now...

And now… frag Rung looked gorgeous. He looked so _so_ gorgeous, fragging scrap. Prima’s holy _dross_. What the pit-spawned frak was Whirl doing holding a leash that had _that_ sort of mecha on the other end of it? He had no business, absolutely none, with even _imagining_ what Rung’s spark[2] looked like. Yet here he was, about to order him to open his chamber for him. Primus, they hadn’t even- neither of them had shown themselves [[something wrong with him]] to each other yet. Whirl had just assumed Rung was the type who wouldn’t even _think_ of letting a mecha take a peek under his ‘plate until ritus had been performed. Until they’d both put sparkplay on their lists, and Rung [[glitched]] had encouraged him, and now he was seconds away from watching him service himself. _On his orders_. 

His fans were absolutely roaring.

Rung let out a pointed burst of static, just loud enough to be heard over the din of his ventilation system. Oh, right.

“Ru- uh, Drone Rung,” he started. At least that sounded _slightly_ more authoritative out loud than he had in his head.

“Yes, Controller?” Rung purred, glancing up with a smile just this side of cheeky.

“S- self service. Touch your spark.”

“Yes Controller.” Rung transformed his thoracic plating out of the way, the glass port receding and slipping aside, the metal segments nestling neatly under his gardbraces[3]. He rolled his shoulders back and arched his spine, fully exposing his spark chamber. Where Whirl had a stiff core of reinforced steel he contained a translucent dome of frosted polymer [[not enough weld it shut no one else can have it]] which spiraled open, like an iris, to reveal his very _spark_ and if Whirl had thought him luminescent _before-_

“Slag Rung,” he hissed. His vents shuddered, overtaxed. “I didn’t know you were packing something that _bright_. No wonder sparky wanted you for dessert.”

“Are you pleased, Controller?” he asked. His voice hinted at amusement, but his field glowed with bashful excitement. He laid a hand to his upper abdomen, shifting his thumb to softly trace the rim of his chamber, it’s edge barely brushing the metal. 

“Very pleased. Ultra pleased. Mark me down as complete satisfaction, ten out of ten, happy as a ‘con in a combiner.” Rung suppressed a laugh as he brought his hand up to ghost over the outermost corona, the aerosol trickling through his fingers like heavy fog. He waved his hand through the glowing haze, twisting his wrist to swirl tendrils of it around his fingers. His movements were languid, his optics soft, but the sharpness of his field and the angle of his antenna betrayed an intense focus on Whirl. 

Rung shifted, legs spreading to better support the weight of his frame. He lifted his unoccupied hand to his parted lips and _slowly_ pushed two fingers inside. He spread both fingers apart, widening the aperture of his intake to reveal [[snap right off fingers snap right off]] just a hint of glossa between them. He pressed the tips of his digits against the back of his mouth, sucking to stimulate lubricant production. Then he pulled his fingers-- now liberally coated in fluid-- back out, trailing them downward, under his chin and down his neck, tracing a path to the [[vulnerable shoot him]] top of his spark chamber. His other hand, encased in vapor, made way for his slicked fingers, lowering to cup the underside of his corona. Whirl could make out his glassy shell-- and through the distortion of gelatinous glair within it, the bright point of light that was his center. 

The core flickered as he rocked his fingers rocked against his spark, the electroconductive lubricant [[shoot him just one shot]] amplifying the friction. An arc of static electricity moved through the corona and skipped over his knuckles, he let out a sharp whistle. A particularly deft curl of his thumb, and he bit his lip to stifle a moan. Whirl emitted an embarrassingly squeaky beep of distress and Rung tensed, hands stilling.

“Controller?” he asked, sending a questioning ripple through his field. Whirl winced, talons jittering.

“Scrap, sorry. Offlining my vox.” Rung’s mouth tightening in a way which meant he was deliberately not frowning. Oh, right. “I mean- I want you to make noise. I wanna hear you.”

“Yes, Controller.” Rung turned his attention back to self servicing, sawing his lubricated fingers over the crown of his spark. Lines of electricity crackled through the thinning corona, struck at the film beneath it. He rocked his palm against his spark and gasped, fans whirring into next gear. He hunched over, letting out a plaintive moan.

“Sit up,” Whirl whined, bereft at being deprived of his view. He didn’t even register what he’d said as an order until Rung snapped to attention, servos still hard at work groping the taut shell of his [[slice right through out the back pinned to the spinal column]] spark. _Primus_ , what he would give to see Rung knuckle deep in- his train of thought derailed completely at the abrupt revelation that all he’d have to give was the word- 

“Finger it, your spark,” he snapped, plating rising in his thrill. 

“Y- yes, Controller.” Rung nodded, his frame venting out stiflingly hot air. He quickly dipped his fingers back into his mouth before pressing them hard against the crown of his spark. He whimpered, nearly doubling over again before he stopped himself, locked his spine in position. The film protecting his spark was still tight, but the pressure and static charge of his fingers were weakening it [[springer]], forcing a pocket open. Whirl felt a pang of worry-- he didn’t want Rung to hurt himself-- and was about to rescind the order when Rung let out a yelp, his digits sliding cleanly through the barrier and into the plasma of his spark. He fell forward, the hand not currently impaled insider him darting ahead to stop his thorax just short of hitting the floor. He bowed his helm, arms twitching, and whined.

“Hey Doc- uh Drone. Done Rung,” Whirl said, doing his best impression of stern disapproval. “You know I’d never pass up a chance to check out your aft, but I can’t see scrap from this vantage point. You promised me a show.” It was not a simple thing to maintain his Magnus impression and his arousal at the same time-- his voice rapidly shifted into a more typical teasing rasp. “But you don’t seem to be very good at maintaining position.” He was a bit taken aback when Rung’s field, his spark, flared with _devastating_ arousal. 

Ooo, that was _interesting_. Whirl knew his list had included Dirty Talk, but that constituted a whole spectrum of slag. It would appear that [[he is a functionless empty]] he had a specific weakness for constructive criticism. Rung tried to [[you think that]] muffle a moan, clenching his jaw. 

“Not great at remembering orders either,” Whirl jabbed experimentally, which gained him a full framed shudder and another moan, this one voiced unhesitatingly.

“S sorry Controller,” Rung flexed his hand experimentally, whimpered at the distortion of his plasma. “I- this drone is accustomed to self servicing q quietly with h... with his face pushed into the s slab.”

“Well, you ain’t doing that right now, are ya?” he barked, feeling a strange thrill when Rung averted his optics.

“No, Controller. This drone apologi-”

“What _are_ you doing?” he prompted his partner, feigning exasperation.

“Entertaining you, Controller,” Rung offered, helm still downcast. Whirl pulled his arm back, the movement delivering a swift yank to Rung’s lead. His force wasn’t sufficient to knock him over, but it was more than enough to get his attention, to force his chin upwards and his optics to attention.

“Look at me while you do it,” he ordered-- employing extreme restraint to stifle a compliment about his gorgeous fragging optics which threatened to follow. “Don’t take your fingers out.”

“Yes, Controller.” Rung’s optics were bright, sharply focused, as he pumped his fingers upwards into the plasma of his spark. The smaller mecha was venting hard through his gaping mouth-- his frame’s attempt to cool the delicate circuitry of his helm. He let out rough bursts of static, interspersed with warbling whistles, as he pumped his fingers back and forth. His seal sucked greedily at his digits, as if Rung’s very spark was trying to keep to his orders. Whirl was pretty sure it actually had some mechanological basis [[check the neck]] in protecting the spark from contaminants or whatever, but he didn’t really give a frag about that. 

He could practically _smell_ the crackle of charge building in his systems.

“Touch the inside of your shell,” he ordered, and Rung hooked his fingers to do so, made an approximation of a fist and rubbed the thin layer between his fingertips and palm. That idea earned Whirl a stuttering burst of unintelligible binary, so he told him to do it harder, faster, to alternate his strokes between horizontal and vertical. Rung obeyed each new instruction promptly, vents hitching [[sink your talons in]] and voxcoder spitting static.

“Put your other hand back on,” he ordered-- and he did, experimentally pinching and rubbing around the edge of his chamber until he found a satisfactory place to focus on. With the arm that once braced him occupied, Rung nearly doubled over [[stomp him in half]], whining. Whirl tugged his lead, a gentle reminder.

“Harder,” Rung croaked, in a pathetically _needy_ voice that sent his finish bubbling with arousal.

“You sure?” he asked, optic focusing on his exposed neck, the vital cables.

“The clasp will f ail before it cuts off engeron flow, p please.” His helm jerked to the side, scopes flashing in a frantic attempt to catch his attention. “ _Please_ ,” he begged, with those optics and that voice and those fragging eyebrows and _how was Whirl supposed to deny him, hmm?_ He _yanked_ the lead-- Rung’s spinal strut straightened out immediately, his spark flared with a shock of electricity that left scorching trails of soot over the plating of his hands, he vented heavily through his intake. Pit-spawned glitch, he wanted to see that intake [[is it real is it real]] wrapped around the fingers of those hands.

“Now-”

“C controller,” Rung half spoke and half moaned, cutting him off. “Forgive this drone b but I- this drone is about to overload.” Whirl felt a giddy swell of pride [[no]]-- although the back of his mind was quick to remind him that he’d done nothing of note to contribute towards this accomplishment.

“Awesome,” he growled, antenna snapping to attention.

It said a lot about how worked up Rung was that the look he gave his was unguardedly, _visibly_ stricken. “ _Whirl_ ,” he whined, and Whirl flickered his optic because he had no idea why he would be so- Oh, _right_.

“Scrap, sorry. Uh. I mean.” He ground his voxcoder and raised his voice, keeping his tone as certain as he could manage. “No you don’t!” Rung _mewled_ , and it was an intolerably pitifully noise. It was only the certainty that he would be dismally disappointed if Whirl granted him relief so quickly that kept him from taking his words back. “Keep servicing,” he ordered, voice authoritative despite his misgivings. “But you can’t overload until I say so.”

“Yes Controller,” Rung managed to reply. It was strange how denying Rung overload could prompt such a strong pulse of _gratitude_ to overwhelm his field. _Good strange_ , Whirl decided. Very good strange. He remembered-- now that he’d been jostled out of the heat of the moment, what Rung had said when they’d reconvened. He had told him that he could-- that he _should--_ keep denying him [[voxcoder busted scrape it out]] until he cried Mercy. With a helm full of filthy images and a spark full of confidence, Whirl had preened and told him that wouldn’t be a problem. Of course, Whirl had made the fatal error of not accounting for how fragging _hot he_ would look, venting in bursts and digging his fingers into the glair of his spark, tendrils of aerosol wrapping around his wrists, whole frame shaking with sensation. 

Whirl wanted to feel that _with_ him, to access every sensation, to have the feeling [[make him]] of phantom hands against his core. He wanted to dip into the datastream of his thoughts, catalogue the exact hue and tone of his desire. He wanted to drop the lead, flip his cockpit and ask Rung [[he has to]] to hook up with him. He wanted Rung to grind his spark against the exposed plating of his thorax [[he is smaller than you]], intermingle his corona with his field. He wanted to see how he looked through Rung’s optics. 

But that wasn’t part of the scene. Pits, [[rip it out stolen from you]] Whirl had been the one who’d suggested they avoid ‘facing, avoid touching, on their first go at this. Rung let out a low moan, optics sparking, and grit his teeth with the effort of suppressing overload. Whirl’s spark spun so hard it practically _whirred_. Spun so hard he wondered if Rung couldn’t feel the heat of it [[came to kill you]], wondered if it might melt right through his casing. Two more minutes. Just, he’d wait two more minutes, that’s the plan. Rung twisted his helm down and to the side, deliberately choking himself on his lead, and fixed flickering optics [[he did this]] on Whirl’s own. Whirl buzzed, processor swimming. On second thought, frag the plan.

“Okay! Okay, it’s cool now, it’s all cool. You’re allowed, it’s okay now, permission, uh, granted. Do it.” Even he could tell he was blabbering. Great.

Rung rubbed his face against the lead of his leash and whistling as he steadfastly kneaded his spark. An instant later, his spark flared in a crackling burst of heat and light, frame stiffening and voxcoder fritzing. Charge dispersed from every gap of his plating, arcs of electricity skipping over his body and dancing into the air. A binary yelp-- indecipherably complicated by static and artefacts-- trailed off into a moan and finally a skipping, stuttering whimper. His frame listed loosely to the side, collapsing to the floor as soon as Whirl slacked his lead. His fans were still in high gear, intake still gaping, optics knocked offline. 

He took a minute to recover, then flexed the fingers he’d embedded into the body of his spark, sharp pain [[falling out and leaking and spoiled spoiled dying spoiled]] flashing through his field. Whirl tensed as he felt the other mecha’s discomfort, but Rung sent out a pulse of reassurance. They’d talked about this as well. Overload could prime the sensory circuits to the point of oversensitivity, so that any stimulation [[infected take it out]] resulted in pain. Rung expected it. Rung knew what it felt like. If anything was amiss, he would signal Whirl to get a medic. So Whirl stayed where he was, audials alert, optic focused intently on his partner’s frame [[hurry hurry]]. 

Rung spent another moment bracing himself, then pulled his digits out slowly, the shell of his spark reforming cleanly behind them. His fingers were just this side of molten-- plating glowing red beneath a spattered crust of soot. When he let his hand drop to the floor it sizzled as if in protest. He onlined his optics, clicking softly under the muffling roar of his fans, and glanced back up at Whirl, a shade of unease [[disgusted]] cast over his expression. Scrap. What had he fragged up now, what had he forgotten to-

“Good drone! Good Rung!” he called, and to his relief Rung’s expression immediately relaxed, his field shimmering with satisfaction. “Very good drone!” Remembering his grip on the leash-- and not wanting to complicate the geometry of their frames even more-- he shook his servo until the handle loosened and fell to the floor. He sat down, scooted towards Rung before spreading his arms and beckoning him over. His impulse was to scoop his partner up [[drag him]], but Rung had been very clear about needing to be the one to initiate contact. 

“Come here, come to Whirl” he cooed in what he hoped was a _sexy_ soothing-- as opposed to _postnatal_ soothing-- voice. Rung’s optics flickered, his frame still, for a while. Then he pushed himself upwards, transformed his chamber closed, and crawled [[by the leg]] to the side of Whirl’s cockpit and into his lap. Whirl closed his arms around Rung’s frame immediately, pressing their heated plating together in a tight hug.

“Who’s a good bot?” he trilled “You’re a good bot. Rung’s a good bot.” Rung relaxed into the embrace, nuzzling the side of his cockpit gently, plating pinging as it cooled.

“Thank you Controller.”

“Don’t even mention it, Doc.”

The pleasant haze in Rung’s field gave way to something distinctly withering. 

“Uh, that is,” _whoops_ , “wow, what a good drone you are?” 

Rung quirked a smile and pressed his lips against his shoulder. Prima he was such a fracking _masterpiece_.

Alright, time to get back on track. Aftercare scrap. 

He did his best to make sure his field open and warm, without focusing too sharply on a particular emotion or intent. Once that task had been accomplished, he began swaying ever so slightly back and forth, a gentle rocking motion [[filthy filthy have to be to do it for you]] that slowly drained the tension from Rung’s actuators. The smaller bot offlined his optics, field still jittery and volatile. Every few minutes Whirl mumbled something about how good he had been, how gorgeous or how obedient. He had said that using his name usually helped, [[rong]] so he scattered his designation throughout his patter. Rung shifted position a few times-- at one point he transformed his thoracic plating back over his chamber-- but it was not long before he was curled up comfortably, fingers twitching in familiar patterns against his palms. In time, the smaller mecha’s field settled into a heavy contentment.

And then, with a small droning buzz, his optics lit again.

“You did very well, Whirl,” he muttered, smiling against his plating. Whirl twitched his antenna, synthesized a scoff.

“I fragged it up like a million times.” 

Rung hummed, rolling his helm against Whirl’s upper arm and gazing up at his pedipalps affectionately. “There were a few _missteps_ , perhaps, but nothing dire. You erred on the side of caution, and you were sincerely trying.” Rung pushed his frame upwards, wriggling out of the embrace of Whirl’s arms. Perched on his knee, he had a far better vantage point from which to hook an arm around Whirl’s neck, pulling him in so that their helms were level. He paused just short, with a questioning trill. Whirl closed the distance between his forehelm and the bridge of his scopes, and he smiled. 

“The most important thing,” he mumbled against the lense of his optic, “is that I felt safe with you. I _feel_ safe with you, and I feel comfortable going forward.”

“Forward?” Whirl prompted eagerly, rasping static. 

“If... you want to.” Trepidation seeped into Rung’s field, so Whirl nuzzled into the bunt. Rung didn’t pull away, which he took as a sign that his clumsy stab at reassuring him had been more or less successful. Still, [[scared]] always good to hedge your bets.

“I wanna, yeah.”

Rung grinned and emitted a delighted trill, turning his helm to the side and resting it against his shoulder. His optics dimmed, and for a moment all was quiet, except for the residual whirring of their respective fans.

“So,” Rung said, warm voice cutting suddenly through the silence. “The next half cycle slot open in my schedule is a week from now. That will give us plenty of time to book the recreation room again, provided you are also available at that time. Actually,” his voice hitched with excitement, “it might be best if we set this block of time aside _indefinitely_ for such conference. I imagine that-- even if we _are_ able to meet weekly-- there are months, perhaps _years_ worth of material we could deliberate on! If you are eager to get started before then, I am in posession an excellent technical guide I think you’d appreciate, as well as a philosophy text that could be quite edifying for you in-” Whirl threw his helm back so severely and suddenly that it hit his dorsal plating with a resounding thunk. He bounced his optic and let out an exasperated whistle for good measure.

“ _Come on_ Eyebrows,” he groaned-- another bad habit cribbed from Verity. “You’re _killing me_ with this micro-management. I don’t need to read a fragging _technical manual_ or some 700,000 glyph _philosophy textpad_ to help me conceive of throwing a few kinks into our ‘facing life. Negotiation and thinking scrap out is one thing, but this is just _excessive_.”

“You... don’t enjoy that sort of thing?” Judging by the tone of his voice and field, Rung was genuinely shocked to find out Whirl hadn’t been having the time of his functioning. Perhaps that’s how Rung managed to stay unattached all these millions of years. Perhaps that’s why he didn’t mind having ended up with Whirl. The mecha couldn’t take a hint [[you can use this]] if it was inscribed on the inside of his fragging scopes.

“No. Not really.” 

“Well I…” Rung paused to consider his words. At least he seemed more befuddled than he was insulted by Whirl’s distaste for minutiae. “I suppose we could each, independently, go over the combined survey results. If we do that, and construct a shortlist of possible scenes, we could reconvene in, perhaps, four cycles’ time? Provided we have no major concerns to discuss-- and the agreed upon scene is not beyond the scope of either of our experience-- we might be able to move fairly quickly towards enacting it. Perhaps within the span of an hour, even.” 

Whirl raised his helm, fixed Rung with a wide and intent optic.

“Doc, that’s the _hottest fracking thing_ you’ve ever said to me.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1The Cybertronian color system of safewords works as follows: Red means “everything is alright,” yellow mean “I need you to check in,” and blue mean “stop now.” It is based on the color of flame at different temperatures. [ return to text ]
> 
> 2The Cybertronian Spark is made up of four layers. The outermost layer is the Corona, a sort of dense aerosol which functions to cushion the rest of the spark and maintain the environment of the spark chamber. The layer beneath the corona is the Film (sometimes called a Shell), a thin protective skin which covers the surface of the spark. Incased within the film is the Glair, a sort of dense, almost gelatinous plasma. Suspended in the middle of the glair is the innermost layer, the Core, a small solid sphere of pure light energy.  [ return to text ]
> 
> 3Gardbraces are pieces of plating that protect the shoulders and/or the sides of the thorax. [ return to text ]


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whirl does a lot of thinking. Actually, Whirl does too much thinking.
> 
> Noncanon Pronouns: http://archiveofourown.org/works/5279501/chapters/15017650/

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fictional slurs and fetishisation, splitting, mention of involuntary medication.
> 
> I've given up on keeping chapters at uniform length.

Eyebrows had been nice about it, because when was he ever _not_ nice, but Whirl knew he'd fragged everything up. 

Alright, maybe not _everything_ \-- Dr. Skimmer had been on him about stepping back from extremes, and Whirl had decided to begrudgingly humor xir suggestions-- maybe not _every single_ aspect of their _entire_ relationship. But he'd definitely fragged up the ‘facing part. And he _liked_ the ‘facing part. He liked it _a lot_. He liked it so much that, once they’d wrapped the scene, it’d taken a full cycle for his processor to stop hovering on updrafts and start picking it apart. 

Rung had been perfect-- of _course_ he'd been perfect-- but Whirl had been a fragging mess. He'd wasted too much time just gaping, he'd forgotten what to say and when to say it, he'd lost track of what the scene was even _about_. He could only imagine how Rung must have felt, sitting there-- probably uncomfortable, those old joints of his, he was always complaining about them and he _made him wait_ \-- and realising what a lost cause [[hates you]] he was, what a fragging _glitch_.

Whirl could have hurt him. _Might have_ hurt him. His processor replayed the moment that his fingers had slipped past the film of his spark, guilt and thrill surging at once. What if it had hurt-- in the bad way not the good way-- and he was just too polite to mention it? He didn’t know how a fragging spark worked! He barely remembered what it’d been like to play with his own, and Rung’s was so much older and so much brighter and probably [[too good get it filthy]] didn’t even work the same way as his. Rung’s spark probably had all sorts of fragging secrets that another _intellectual_ would’ve figured out instantly, just from looking at it.

Whirl told himself that if Rung would have signaled him if he _had_ been hurt. He would have used one of their safewords, asked for a break. He would have told him, and he would have stopped [[would you]]. _Yes_ , his spark soothed. _No_ , his processor snapped. 

Even if he hadn’t hurt him then, the beat of his spark felt like a countdown until the cycle he _would_. He was very clever at the task of ruining things, of hurting mechen. If his processor saw a window for violence, it would pick at it until it cracked open. Vicious thoughts would proliferate in his helm, swarming and goading and clinging like barnacles. Opportunity begged to be seized. And there was so much opportunity with Rung at his pedes, with his lead in his grasp. There was so much possibility in his exposed spark, his slim neck, his _obedience_. 

In the core of his spark Whirl had wanted to touch him. Even though they hadn’t talked about that-- even though he didn’t have permission-- he'd _wanted_ to [[are you sure you didn’t]] until his claws had ached. 

“Rung _trusts_ me,” he reminded himself. He had known what he was getting into-- a glitched empuratee with a history of brutality and the impulse control of an insecticon swarm. He had known, and he had trusted him. To hurt him. To stop. 

Besides, this wasn’t Whirl’s first recon. Thoughts like that _always_ flared, frenzied by possibility, when he found himself in a new situation. The first time he'd come out of recharge with Rung still asleep in his arms, he'd thought things that still made his tanks roil. He'd thought things that kept him awake two cycles, terrified of what his frame might try to pull if he weren’t there to restrain it. But time had passed, Rung had kept falling into recharge tangled up with his frame, it had gotten easier to deal with. Easier to believe [[pretend]] he wouldn’t. What worked for him, when trying to deal with vicious suggestions and intrusive orders, was to get habituated. The sooner the idea of doing all this kinky slag became normal, the sooner his helm would shut off about it.

Rung might have been onto something with all his lesson plans, letting him ease in so slowly and mundanely that he couldn’t possibly get riled up enough to act out. Either that or he'd been angling for them in hopes of teaching Whirl how to be less of a fragging mess in the berth. That was probably why he had tried to set up another lecture as soon as they were done. Well the joke was on _Rung_ this time, because Whirl did best at things he taught himse _lf_ to do, and he was gonna figure this kinky shit out if it offlined him.

His first impulse was to hit up one of Rung’s old Kimia friends. 

If there really _had_ been a Secret Kinky Sex Club For Nerds on Kimia, he highly doubted Brainstorm _wasn’t_ involved. The ‘Junxies had probably been part of that scene as well, if only because Rewind seemed like the kind of mecha who liked to watch and Chromedome would want to tag along. Perceptor and Atomizer were hard to get reads on, getting information out of them would probably be a pain. Swerve-- well, if Swerve had ever been involved in a secret club, the entire Lost Light would’ve known about it by now. His best bet seemed to be tracking down Brainstorm, isolating xer from surveillance and other mechen, and interrogating xer about the specifics of who on Kimia fragged Rung, and how they fragged him, and- 

Whirl paused, played back that last stream of thought, realised that it sounded kind of creepy. Perhaps because it _was_ kind of creepy? Whirl puzzled over the data. Switching out some of his glyphs for more innocuous alternatives did not make it sound better. It kind of made him sound like Prowl.

“ _Dross_ ,” he grumbled.

Whirl spent his midcycle refueling period sulking around one of the hallway energon dispensers. He didn’t typically fuel in public, but this locale allowed him the opportunity to entertain himself by glaring bitterly at passersby. He knew asking Brainstorm would be a bad plan. Even if he didn’t blab about it, even if [[kill the witnesses]] Rung never found out, it didn’t sit right to go behind his back like that. But how was he supposed to teach himself to be Rung’s dream-dom if he didn’t know what that looked like, sounded like? 

He was mulling this dilemma over, sluggishly draining his cube, when the energon dispenser in the wall bept for his attention. He ignored it. It bept again, louder. He glanced around furtively, then focused his optic on the dispenser.

“What?” he snapped, voice a harsh whisper.

“He filled out a survey.” The dispenser chirped, it’s high voice muffled slightly by static.

The survey! That… should have been obvious. Would have been, were Whirl not in the habit of conspicuously avoiding anything even resembling homework. If Whirl had been bad with tests, he was absolutely _dismal_ with homework. As much as he balked at the structure of an academy classroom, without someone venting over his shoulder he almost immediately drove himself to distraction. Of course, the texts he was used to being assigned weren’t about his hot datemate’s interfacing preferences. The survey results wouldn’t be as enlightening as having a blow by blow testimony of his Kimia shenanigans, but it was a place to start. In the very least it would give him something to show for himself at their next meetup. Whirl finished his cube off and tossed it in the general direction of the nearest disposal chute, turning down the hall.

“You’re welcome,” the dispenser called after him.[1]

The first thing he did once he'd sat down with the survey was futz with the filter. The scrap he was into wasn’t relevant at the moment. He needed the download on _Rung’s_ peculiarities. He managed, after some confusion, to persuade the datapad to give him a list of his highest ranking items. A lot of them were familiar, activities he'd already seen listed in their matched rankings, the ones Rung had done that whole word chart performance around. Familiar or not, they were still worth exploring in more detail. He clicked on the highest ranked item, Dirty Talk, for more details. Degradation was listed as Rung’s favorite aspect, followed by Praise. Whirl was pretty confident about the Praise bit-- he could probably ramble on for hours about what a fragging catch Rung was-- but he'd gotten the impression that talking him up was mostly an aftercare thing. It wasn’t the main event. The main event was the talking down bit-- the Degradation-- which was the category he was currently drawing a blank on. He remembered how marvelously Rung had responded to his playful jabs at his performance. He could nitpick his behavior, but that wasn’t something he could really _rehearse_. Whirl would probably run out of things [[useless glitched broken]] to attack real quick, knowing Rung’s streak for perfectionism. The only criticisms he could come up with off the top of his helm weren’t very charge inducing-- they mostly concerned Rung’s terrible recharge habits and cluttered hab suite.

“Oh Rung, you’ve been a bad bot,” he muttered to himself. “You haven’t cleaned under your slab since you came aboard.” 

Yeah, not great.

Unfortunately, going further down the list did not bring him further from the general theme of debasement. Objectification, Drone Play, Emotional Play (Degradation, Humiliation), Byproduct Consumption, Public Humiliation, Pollution, Charge Dumping, Defacement… There were a few high ranked items-- Training, Interface Programs, Service, Internal Play, Choking-- that didn’t _necessarily_ involve debasement. Unfortunately, those categories still weren’t ones he was familiar with. Not that their appeal was lost on him-- even acts he'd never given much thought to became a hundred times more charge inducing when he thought about Rung getting off on them.

The problem was, most of his experience with power exchange had placed him in the less demanding role. He'd gotten used to laying back and thinking of Cybertron. He'd gotten _complacent_. He was used to being the one tied up-- not a lot of mechen wanted to let his claws anywhere near them. Not the _submissive_ exactly-- at least not in the way Rung thought of it, since he'd never been happy about it-- more [[pathetic rusting wreck]] the _subordinate_. The one that took direction. The mecha with less to offer, the one who should be _grateful_. Considering how rarely anyone expressed genuine interest in him, and how arduous it was to take care of himself, he usually _was_ grateful. Getting spit on and told he was a glitched waste of fuel [[nothing to offer]] was far from the worst price to pay for relief. But Rung wasn’t just saying he was _willing_ to tolerate that scrap, he was actually _soliciting_ it.

If that’s what Rung wanted, Whirl was gonna give it to him. And he wasn’t going to frag it up like last time, acting like some kind of new build who couldn’t tell a port from an intake. He was going to figure out how this scrap was meant to be done, and then do it _right_.

Whirl put the datapad with the survey aside, turning on his personal console. Thank Unicron for the DataNet.

“Alright PortHub, show Whirl how it’s done,” he crooned, talons pecking at the keyboard beneath the screen as he navigated to the popular vid site. When it came to purging his own charge, he generally preferred emulators[2] and text files, but those wouldn’t be as helpful when it came to polishing up on proper dom behavior. It was easier to imitate things he could see and hear demonstrated-- and it was easier to focus when he wasn’t distracted by his own whirring fans. He quickly located the “Category Search” option, where he typed in ‘Humiliation + Degradation.’

“Oh Primus,” he muttered as his screen was abruptly filled with lurid splashes of red and purple. That sure was a lot of ‘ _bot on ‘con_. He _really_ didn’t need to see that dross. He revised his search to ‘Humiliation + Degradation - Crossfaction’ His talon hovered over the enter icon before returning to the keyboard and adding ‘- Decepticon’ as well, because there was no way a dross siphoning _‘con_ was going to teach him how to ‘face his datemate.

That garnered far more tolerable results, but not particularly helpful ones. 

_seeker loves degrading filthy grounders_

_‘copter needs to be humiliated_

_arrogant ‘scope nasty secret exposed_

_primal racecar wheel worship_

Whirl hummed in irritation. 

Alt-centric insults were not exactly useful for his purposes. He doubted there would be an Ornament section, but he took a look into the Alt-Type section anyway. As expected, there wasn’t even a Miscellaneous or Other category. There _was_ a Monoformer one, but Rung wasn’t [[liar]] a monoformer, and Whirl [[cut out his tongue that's what you do with liars]] wasn’t that desperate. 

Whirl wished he could search for alt-neutral vids, but alts were so ubiquitous that most of the vids that focused on them probably weren’t even tagged for it. He'd never really thought about that before, seeing as he'd never considered interfacing with a mecha who turned into a _thing_ before. Even if there was a way to eliminate alt-type focus, Whirl was pretty sure he'd just end up with a bunch of monoformer vids. Like the time he tried searching ‘no hands.’ He hadn’t gotten a bunch of servo-neutral vids, just a bunch of creepy empurata dross. Now that he'd thought about it, PortHub probably had an Empurata section. It had been a while [[look at it]] since he gave the genre a serious look over. Maybe it had gotten less _unpleasant_. Maybe it was something [[click through]] a mecha could actually _service_ to. Mayb- No. That _wasn’t_ why he was there. Rung’s hot, yet confusing, kink wishlist was why he was there.

Something buzzed in the back of his helm. Unpleasantly. He turned his attention back to the keyword search bar, pedes rustling restlessly [[look]] against the floor of his suite. Rung considered his alt a touchy subject anyway, he probably wouldn’t want it brought up during interface. His best bet would be to focus on some other element. Caste or profession or something. He typed ‘high caste bot humiliated’ into the [[look]] bar, checked the Within Specified Categories option, and tapped the search icon.

_alleyway charge dump sucks talon_

_empuratee property_

_forced to lick ‘rata engine_

_humiliated under claw_

His optic flickered in surprise and irritation. The thing at the back of his helm buzzed louder. He ignored it.

“No, Whirl,” he snapped, glaring at his offending talons [[all you are]]. “We aren’t visiting the ‘rata section, we’re looking for ways to do debasement scrap to Rung. Stop getting distracted.” He moved to take Empurata out of the list of specified categories. 

It wasn’t there. 

His optic flickered again. He refreshed the page. He looked it over, carefully this time, and realised that his first impression hadn’t been entirely accurate-- not _all_ of the vids featured empuratees. Just _most_ of them. The buzzing thing was pressing urgently against his conscious mind, was rattling his struts, was refusing [[that’s all you are to them]] to be ignored. Isn’t that ironic. Rung’s kink wishlist had lead right to- The buzzing crescendoed. The revelation shot through his processor like a mnemosurgeon’s needle.

Obvious. 

Obvious, it was _obvious_.

Whirl really should have known. He really should have figured [[that’s all you are to him]] it out faster than this. Look at Rung and then look at him. It was _obvious_. He'd thought it himself. He'd thought _Rung must know how it is with mechen like me, Rung must know he can’t expect a romance vid performance._ Turns out he never had. Rung was smart. Rung knew what he was getting into. Rung touching him without shame, looking over his frame with sly desire. He had never suggested repairs or operations, he had never asked if there were image captures of him before. He’d _known_ what he was getting into.

Whirl felt something rising up in his spark, something molten and sharp and _painful_. His core was fast becoming a smelter, a cackling furnace, a _wound_. A wound like a weakness, a fracture that could break him into pieces if he let it. So he stamped the thing down, cut it away from his being ruthless as a laser scalpel, and barked out a laugh. 

“Okay,” he rasped, alone in his suite, to no one but himself. “This is _fine_.” As soon as he'd uttered the glyphs his frame was swept by a cold prickling _calm_. His actuators relaxed one by one, his stabilizers drooped by degrees. He knew this drill. He'd thought it was different this time. Rung had moved so slow and been [[tricked you]] so polite about it. He had been clear about his intent. Rung had never done anything to challenge it. He had thought this was something- something- 

He refused to think about what he'd thought it was. It was interfacing. It was a bit of distraction, a bit of fun. It was purging charge. Everything else was just pretense. And he'd fallen for it, for the pretense and for his own [[weak pathetic soft]] fanciful expectations. He'd been fooled even when he saw his list-- all that humiliation, that degradation scrap. He should have figured it out _then_.

He supposed he'd fooled him first, though. Rung had signed up for ‘facing some brutal glitched torch [3] and gotten an incompetent bumbling wreck instead. He’d found out the hard way that Whirl wasn’t even good for _that_ , wasn’t even good for the only thing he expected out of him. He’d been stuck with a dud in the berth, but he could _train_ the thing to behave, couldn’t he? And in the meantime what could be more _humiliating_ than having mechen know you’re ‘facing a _freak_? He must have been overloading under his panels every time someone saw them holding servos. He must have [[tricked you so pathetic]] been having the time of his fragging life.

He reached absentmindedly towards the screen of his console. This page wasn’t good, he wanted to change it, but his touch shattered the display instead. It became distorted, discolored like a rust patch, but the image persisted. He swept his servo across the screen-- sparkling shards of glass ricocheted against his plating, skipped across the surface of his desk. The console shorted and shut down. Infuriated, he slammed his claws into its innards, tearing at wires and pulling out circuitry until the inside of the console had been completely gutted, until his vents roared with rage.

“Pervy antique really got one over on you.” His synthesized voice [[you won’t tolerate it]] sounded cold and unreal, echoing against the walls off his suite. It was so high and so reedy [[show him you won’t]] and so bafflingly unfamiliar. He stood suddenly, kicking his chair carelessly away [[everyone will know]] from his desk.

He wanted to go out. Go out, find [[kill]] Rung, tell him the fragging jig was up. Eliminate the pressure [[open him like a sweep]] around his spark. He had comms, but Rung would want him to [[pull him into halves into pieces]] come directly to him. He always wanted to talk about feelings [[feed him his fingers]] in person. In person, where Rung had the advantage of his voice [[if you don’t he wins he proves it all you are]] and his smile. In person, where he might do things [[give him what he wanted out of you]] he couldn’t undo. His optic flickered, his helm [[kill him kill him]] was burning hot.

Whirl had to do this _fast_. Fast and [[you or him]] clean, a blow that couldn’t be dismissed. A comm brutal enough to withstand even [[triple tap]] Rung’s defenses. He opened his comm center and-

::[Indicate Status]: Emergency/Non Emergency::

Whirl stared at the popup that had abruptly introduced itself into his vision. He tried to dismiss it. It emitted scolding beep and remained firmly lodged between him and his communications suite. He tried to move it out of the way. Another beep, it wouldn’t [[tear it out]] budge. Whirl was not new to his systems issuing strange, unprompted readings. Especially in times like this, when he was a jumble of defense and attack, a frenzy [[he put it there tear it out]] of violent rumination. But those reading came from his sensory array, from his circuitry and audials and the back of his helm. Not his optics. Not his HUD. He pinned his antenna flat. 

This wasn’t his processor.

This was his fragging _Impulse Management Program_.

He remembered this program. He remembered [[do you did you]] installing it. He remembered reading its manual. When it detected high levels of stress, a spike in charge, and certain electromagnetic frequencies, it would temporarily prevent him from sending comms. 

Whirl was pretty sure he hated that fucking program more than anything he'd ever hated in the entirety of his functioning.

::Indicate Status: [Emergency]/Non Emergency::

He could sidestep the block by claiming an emergency, rather than rage, was the cause of his symptoms. Problem was, if he did that any comm he sent would [[scrape it all out]] be flagged with emergency priority markers indicating fear for his safety and an immediate need for help. In an actual life threatening emergency, that would be convenient. At _this_ moment, however, it would just be inconveniently ostentatious and embarrassingly needy. Moreover it would warn Rung, giving him the chance to [[scrape it out and hunt him down]] deflect the message, or at least to tattle to Magnus about him misusing comm flags.

::Indicate Status: Emergency/[Non Emergency]::

A blue icon appeared at the corner of his vision, accompanied by a bubble which informed him cheerfully that if he'd selected Non Emergency by accident, or if an emergency [[a trick a trick don’t listen don’t]] occurred suddenly, clicking it would activate Emergency status. He popped the bubble with vicious satisfaction. That message, at least, he could dismiss without consequence.

The one he _couldn’t_ so easily rid himself had changed to read ::Loading Personalised Message::, reminding him about the mecha he should be _most_ furious with... 

::Hey Whirl, it’s past Whirl. If you’re reading this, you’re definitely about to make a terrible decision:: 

“Frag you,” he snapped at past Whirl, glaring at his own glyphs as if trying to destroy them with the pure burning force of his hate.

::Here’s the deal, exhaust port:: the Whirl of the past continued, utterly unaffected by the glaring heat of his optic, ::Instead of shooting off a comm and screwing yourself over, you’re gonna write about it in a text file. Then you’re gonna close it. Then you’re gonna do something else for half an hour. Take a nap or bunt the ‘mate or something. Not punching scrap. You probably already started punching scrap, you fragging glitch, but don’t do more of it. That whole ‘letting off steam’ dross doesn’t work, it just makes you more pissed. Once you’re _actually_ calm you can read the message again and fill out a little questionnaire about it. Then you’ll see what a mess I saved you from making. You probably hate me, but you can’t do scrap about it, because I’m in the past! Ha ha! Suck my antenna, dross siphoner!:: As soon as he'd processed the final glyphs the message disappeared, and he was redirected to a blank text file.

“Huff my damn exhaust,” he muttered.

When Dr. Skimmer had first suggested the program to him, he'd had his doubts. He'd expressed said doubts by throwing a chair at xir and breaking the door of xir office out, screeching all the way that he'd rip his own spark out before he let them put bugs in his brain. He'd expected to get locked up for that-- once he'd come down from full out panic-- but Magnus had just made him stay in his suite for a few cycles and do some boring maintenance work. (Later he'd found out that Ultra Magnus _had_ wanted to put him away, but Skimmer wouldn’t let him. Something about the brig being an “aversive environment,” which would be “inflammatory” and “detrimental.” Whirl had found it hilarious that Skimmer thought he'd even _care_ , considering how many times he'd been thrown in a cell and left to rust before.) 

Rung had come over to his suite, asking about the incident. Whirl had been a little surprised that Skimmer hadn’t already told him-- apparently that confidentially scrap still applied when your datemate was a head shrink. When he'd recounted the whole adventure, Rung had explained that the programs Skimmer had been talking about were different from mnemosurgery or fuel additives. They wouldn’t mess with [[lied he lied]] his processor, wouldn’t make his helm slow and his reflexes dodgy like that dross they’d forced on him in Garrus 1. They would just put up obstacles that’d make it harder for him to act hastily when he was upset. Whirl had asked why the scrap Skimmer hadn’t just explained all of that in the first place. Rung had pointed out that it’s difficult to outline a treatment plan when your client is throwing chairs at you.

When Skimmer had given him datapads simulating various programs to fiddle with, they hadn’t seemed that bad. A little annoying, but Whirl could see [[he put it there]] how they’d help. So he'd agreed on a trial run. He'd installed the program, modified it to his liking, and forgotten about it.

Until now.

Whirl stared at the text file. ::Describe your conclusion/belief/thought:: the heading read. His talons twitched. If he left the file empty, he'd get kicked out of his comm suit and have to repeat the whole process _again_. The program would keep blocking him until he'd either completely returned to baseline mood or claimed [[you or him]] an emergency. But if he was a _good_ glitch, if he wrote something here and then filled out the survey, the program would get deactivated even if he hadn't “calmed down” enough to satisfy its parameters. Plus, even if he couldn’t send it, the text file could serve as a first draft of his comm to Rung. So Whirl started composing.

“If you’d just cut to the point, you fragging claw sucking gloss,” he began, glyphs sharp and rigorous and _boundlessly_ hateful, “I would have _happily_ ‘faced the dust out of your joints….”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1To be clear, the voice Whirl hears from the dispenser is an audial hallucination. Setting a story on a ship populated by transforming mechanical beings makes it kind of tricky to draw the line between animate and inanimate machines. Not all of Whirl's hallucinations are unpleasant, some are benign or even, as in this case, helpful. [ return to text ]
> 
> 2Emulators are, in some ways, the Cybertronian equivalent of sex dolls. They are nonsentient hard drives with a pre-programmed arsenal of sensory files that play at semi-randomised intervals until the user overloads. By plugging into and activating an emulator, a mecha can simulate the experience of receiving tactile stimulation and data from a berth partner. The quality and number of files varies, as does the content. One can have an emulator that imitates “rough” interface, an emulator that imitates a partner of a certain build, etc. [ return to text ]
> 
> 3Torch is an anti-empuratee slur based on the similarities of their singular optics to flashlights. [ return to text ]


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whirl sorts some things out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Noncanon Pronouns Here: http://archiveofourown.org/works/5279501/chapters/15337534

Whirl felt strangely exhausted once he'd finished laying down the law for future Rung-- all the ache of a good sparring session without the damage to show for it. He began to examine this fact-- with no small amount of suspicion-- but his investigation was interrupted by a timer abruptly appearing at the corner of his HUD. It was counting down to the end of his mandatory break. A small victory, but one he savored for all it was worth. _Now to kill half an hour_. Whirl hummed in thought. Bunting his datemate was off the table for _obvious_ reasons. His slab looked appealing. He flexed his claws. If he took a nap now it might constitute a victory for past Whirl-- the piece of dross.

But just the thought of recharge had his drained systems _aching_ …

Whirl put his petulance aside for the sake of his circuits, slumping across his suite and crawling on top of his slab, where he settled [[in your fuel]] on his side and vented quietly. He focused his optic on the expanse of space visible from his window, tracked the pinpoints of distant planets and stars as they glid across the inky canvas. His frame pinged, the planes of his plating slowly recovering from the distorting heat that had possessed his body earlier that cycle. He let out an absentminded whistle, optic still habitually fixated on a blue planet, and slipped into recharge.

 

When he came back online almost an hour later, the survey was already open in his HUD. The file he’d written before his nap was displayed for reference on an adjacent window-- wow, he sure used the word _dross_ a lot. The questionnaire itself had several items, each one with a text box beneath it. Whirl counted them. Four questions. At least past Whirl had had enough sense not to include _every smelting one_ of the fifty-two available questions the program allowed the installer to choose from.

::How is this thought useful?:: the first question read.

“How is this thought _useful?_ ” Whirl mimicked in a mocking tone. He wasn’t totally sure who he was trying to imitate. Maybe Skimmer. Whatever. “It keeps me from wasting energy on some mecha who doesn’t give a scrap about me. Now that I know what the score is, I won’t get...” he paused, searching for the exact glyph. Not _used_ , not something so _pathetic_ as that. “I won’t get cheated.” There, that was more than satisfactory. 

He moved to the next item, ::What evidence is there to support it?::

“The scrap Rung’s into is the same stuff ‘ratas are supposed to be into. It’s _obvious_ ,” he snapped. He’d seen this scrap before. Empurata Fetishists getting off on being so fragging superior just because the Senate didn’t mutilate _them_ \-- or thinking they’re being completely _tarnished_ when they let an empuratee into their systems. A bunch of egocentric glosses who didn’t even have the decency to be good in berth. “Rung’s a fragging helm doctor. He probably knows exactly how to get what he wants, how to hide that kind of scrap.” He vented harshly before continuing. “He never asked me when I was going to get fixed, he never wanted to change my frame. Why _else_ would he _do_ that? And it- it just makes _sense_. It explains why in the burning _pit_ Rung would be with me.”

::What evidence is there to oppose it?:: the next item asked. 

Whirl didn’t want to answer this one-- mostly out of sheer bitterness and opposition. He glared at the question for a long time, weighing the pros and cons of dignifying it [[you didn’t put it there]] with a response. He could always exit the whole survey now, chase Rung down for a face to optic confrontation. 

Yeah, not likely.

“I’m… I’m pretty good at recognising mechen who get off on empurata,” he allowed. “Rung never had the typical signs. Even looking back now, knowing what I _know?_ he never stared at my claws or at my helm. He made such a big deal about thinking ‘rata fetishists were bad. Plus, he isn’t a very good liar.” Whirl couldn’t stop the small chuckle that left his vocoder at that thought, the swell of fondness it summoned. “He spent all that time going _slow_. Even when things were complicated and- and when I really fragged up. And when we _did_ ‘face he didn’t seem to be looking for anything _extra_.” He hesitated, distracted by memories of their earliest interfacing exploits. Rung’s giddy field and nervous smile. Traitorous nostalgia [[a trap]] writhed in his spark. “He kept giving me _outs_ about the kink scrap too,” he found himself saying, “way more than he needed to. Frag, _I’m_ the one who thought it was such a good idea.” Whirl’s antenna twitched as he read over his answer. Uneasy, he looked back at the previous two, reviewed his original text file. He could feel the creeping sensation of guilt, a prickling fog encroaching on his processor.

::How I get more evidence?:: the final question asked.

“Talk to Rung,” he admitted, voice cracked with static indignation. He _couldn’t_. 

Maybe he could pretend that this never happened. Give in to the guilt, delete the text file, hate himself for ever suspecting. But it would come back. He _knew_ how he worked. The doubt and the rage would come back, would hang [[get it over with]] over him like a death sentence, would putrefy his spark. Would make him do and say things he could never make amends for. 

Whirl submitted the survey. A popup reading ::Redirecting to Communications Suite:: sprung into existence, then faded from view. 

Maybe he could just send the text file. That’s what he'd _meant_ to do, what he _would have done_ were it not for the infernal program blocking him. He could send the file, block Rung’s frequency, avoid him until he got the hint. If he was right he'd be sparing himself the effort [[filthy filthy ruined]] of caring for a mecha who thought he was a fragging chump. If he was _wrong_ , well, he wouldn’t deserve Rung anyway. He wouldn’t deserve a mecha so kind and genuine, not if he could think such evil things of him so hastily.

He opened a new comm thread directed to Rung’s frequency. He stared at his HUD. 

He stared for a very long time.

«Rung,» he commed after what felt like a century of hesitation, hastily following with «We need to talk.»

He hoped the stress of the glyph would make it clear this was an _in person_ thing. He scythed his talons nervously back and forth, waiting for a response. Luckily, he did not have to wait long.

«I expected a conversation at the meeting this upcoming cycle?» Rung’s response read. He had an odd sort of affect on comms, especially long distance. All of his glyphs were precisely chosen, but hesitant. Proposed more than decreed. It was not a format he was comfortable with, and it showed. Wretched fondness [[keep your guard up]] creeped through his lines.

«Yeah, I know, but this isn’t a kink thing.» Well, it kind of was, but it was also a lot of _other_ things. Things that Whirl couldn’t manage by himself. «This is not just negotiating,» he clarified

«You want to talk before the upcoming cycle? You want to talk about more than the next scene?»

«Yeah.»

«Something is not correct?» Rung’s message was colored with worry. Whirl’s spark longed to soothe it, longed to snuff it out before it could bring him to harm, but he didn’t want to start them off on a lie.

«Sort of. It’s not an emergency.»

«I understand.» A pause-- long enough that Whirl’s actuators started to feel stiff, short enough to cut his processor off before it could start buzzing at him again. «I am free at the start of the next hour?»

«Meet at my hab?» he suggested.

«I understand,» Rung replied. «Goodbye.»

Whirl stared at his comm suite for a few minutes before shutting it down and rolling off of his slab. He flexed his legs and stretched his neck, snagging his deskchair by the headrest as he passed it. He dragged it into the sunken space in the middle of his suite, set it next to his other chair. For a while he futzed with the exact placement of the furniture, changing their orientation to one another in small ways until they felt _right_. 

Once satisfied, he settled down to wait.

 

The first thing Rung did when he walked into Whirl’s suite was smile at him. It was a shy, kindly expression-- but frag his if it didn’t still glow like the light of the matrix, didn’t still make him feel like a hotspot was igniting at his pedes. The molten thing in his spark started hissing and frothing, a wound threatening to reopen, to overtake him. He doused it with guilt and it sizzled like a bucket of coolant thrown on a speedster after a race. 

Part of him wanted to just drop this, drop the whole thing. Make something [[tear]] up, say there was a misunderstanding. It wasn’t important. It didn’t matter. _Who even cares?_ Not him. Romantic empuratees didn’t exist, remember? 

“Whirl?” Rung called, smile flickering, concerned. He must have been gaping again. _Great_.

“I was going over your survey answers.” Whirl spoke in what he hoped was a casual voice, straightening his spinal strut and tracking Rung’s movements [[tear and tear and tear]] as he sat in the chair opposite his own.

“...Yes?” Rung prompted, clearly not appreciating that Whirl had been going for a dramatic pause there. (Well, ok, he might have _actually_ been grasping for glyphs that would explain this situation without making him looks like a paranoid glitch with a victim complex. But he'd tried to _disguise it_ as a dramatic pause, and it was his opinion that Rung really should have picked up on that.)

“I was going over your answers and it, uh, it got me thinking...” This was probably where those ‘I feel’ and ‘I need’ statements-- the ones Dr. Skimmer was always hounding him about-- were supposed to go, but he was _definitely_ not ready for those. Rung’s field reached out to his own, he could feel the subtle brush of his confusion. _Just fragging say it._ “Thinking that- that you need to explain what you’re getting at, going around with _me_.” The modifiers he'd placed on his personal designation were anything but polite-- they marked him as a wreck, a detriment to society. Not what he was once, what he'd _become_. Rung’s confusion bubbled, his optical ridges furrowed. He would need to be clearer. Whirl felt like his face was being peeled off. A second time.

“Going around with a ‘rata like me,” he clarified. The confusion in Rung’s field dissipated. What replaced it was more concern than understanding, but it was enough to loosen the tension in Whirl’s lines by a fraction.

“You want to know how I conceptualise- how I think about your empurata?” Rung asked, so close and yet so very, _very_ far.

“Kinda?” he allowed, unsure how else to explain himself.

“I…” Rung paused, hummed. Whirl wasn’t in a hurry to interrupt him. “I don’t find myself dwelling on it much,” he continued. “I wouldn’t say I’m _oblivious_ to it, I’m not attempting to ignore it. It’s just… a part of you. An important part, but not the thing that first and foremost comes to min-” 

“You ever watch porn vids with empuratees in them?” Whirl asked suddenly, lifting his claws and flexing them in an exaggerated pinching motion for emphasis. Rung flicked his optics, caught off guard.

“I… I don’t really watch vids,” he answered.

“Well, datapads. Image captures. Anything in the genre.” He scythed his talons frantically, as if he could implore Rung to understand him by gesture alone. “Anything with mechen like _me._ ” Whirl stressed the final glyph-- it’s markers, it’s _stigma_. 

Realisation overpowered Rung’s confusion like a sudden rogue wave, guilt and fear and worry dashing through his field in the aftermath. Beyond anything else, beyond all [[confession]] assumptions, that sliver of _guilt_ pierced Whirl like a fragging fusion cannon. 

Rung did not say anything at first. He looked away from Whirl and thinned his lips. The wound that was Whirl’s spark was burning like [[him or you]] a fresh weld _._ He’d been right. He’d been right, all of it had been right. He’d fallen for his own ridiculous promises to himself. He’d let this happen like [[crush him his vox his throat]] a fragging fool and now- and now he [[kill him]] was about to- to- 

“You think…” Rung began, and his voice shot through the ruckus of his mind like a spotlight, his voice made his spark pulse harder than he’d thought possible.“You think I pursued you because I expected, based on what you looked like, what had been done to you, that-” 

“You can’t say the whole Empuratee Experience doesn’t fit just _perfect_ with your kinks, Doc,” Whirl interrupted, a frantic and sorely belated attempt to backtrack on his honesty. “You really went _on and on_ in the survey, all about getting off on being roughed up and overpowered and talked down to. The whole degrading _pleasure drone business_ you get off on, being teased about the stuff that revs you up.” He could feel Rung pulling his field inwards, away from his own. Worse, he was making it worse. He let out a high cackling laugh, scrambling for purchase, his spark molten-- a star, a scar, an ember in his thorax burning terrible and bright. “You must have been real annoyed when I turned out to be such a dud, but at least you could get off on knowing other mechen thought you were getting the rust fragged out of your joints by a freak glitch. You know, it’s not-”

“Whirl,” Rung cut in, worry in his voice and his optics.

“It’s not like I _give_ a frag,” he barrelled through the interruption, lines roaring so loud he'd swear mechen could hear him from across the ship. “I’m not some ‘rata rights activist who loses control of my tanks just because I find out someone’s getting a rise out of being seen with me. I just want it to be clear, you know?” His voxcoder was fritzing, he reset it stubbornly. “Cards on the table, you know?”

“Whirl, I’m so…” For a split second Rung lost hold of his field and Whirl felt it buffeting against his own like a storm of sorrow and mourning and distant but sharp _pain_. Then it was back against his plating. He hunched forward, fingers twitching against his abdomen in small picking motions. “Whirl, I hope you can believe me when I tell you that such motives are the _last_ things on my mind.” Rung’s voice was strained, his antennae lowered. “I had no intention, no awareness, of treating you as a curiosity. I thought that...” 

_Primus,_ Whirl thought, _Rung is so earnest about things like this._ So earnest and honest and concerned and it hit Whirl like a Phase Sixer’s fist that he had been _wrong_. All wrong. About _everything_. 

Which meant he'd made this big blinking deal out of nothing. Which meant he'd gotten Rung upset for no fragging reason. Which meant that all of that guilt[[just because you’re scum doesn’t mean everyone else is]] and pain and sadness he had felt in his field was Whirl’s fault and Whirl’s alone. How could he have even thought- have even _suspected- what kind of glitched out, self centered, **paranoid** -_

Oh Pit, Rung was still talking.

“...not that that excuses my words or action, I just didn’t realise-” 

“Primus Doc, calm down!” He shouted, lunging forward and spreading his arms wide. “It wasn’t _you_ , it was _me-_ it was just my fragged up processor.” He forced his optic into a grin, a gleeful curve that stood in defiance of the antenna pinned against his helm, the painfully superficial perk of his stabilizers. “You know me, _Fritzy Whirly Bird!_ You know how I glitch out over nothing!” 

To Whirl’s immense relief, his outburst seemed to do the job of snapping Rung out of his apology spiral. At least it had for a moment.

“I… I don’t mean to dismiss your experiences,” Rung said, “but Whirl, this wasn’t _nothing_. You didn’t come to that conclusion based on _nothing_. I-” he paused, perhaps searching for the right glyphs. “I did not consider the fact that you have a very real need to protect yourself from people who see you that way. I should have been- I should have _thought_ to address that.” his speech was much less frantic than it had been, but his field was still distant and his optics sad [[all your fault everything your doing]] and Whirl could feel guilt eating at his circuitry like a scraplet infestation.

“You don’t need to beat yourself up over my rusted out processor,” he laughed, it was a barren sound. “I’d hate for you to put yourself through that dross just because I had a little short circuit.” The forced curve of his optic was wavering, he hung his helm to avoid Rung’s gaze. 

“You’re right.” he allowed, and it felt like agony and it felt like relief. Rung took one of his hands away from his abdomen and stretched it across the expanse that separated their chairs-- an offering. his field bloomed gently, forewarning him of his proximity. 

“How about we make a deal,” Rung said. “I will try to abstain from ‘beating myself up’ over things I have done or said that might have been misleading. In exchange, I ask _you_ not to be cruel to _yourself_ for having suspected me of ill intent. If we’re both trapped in rumination over our own guilty consciences, I doubt we’ll be able to get anywhere.” his hand remained aloft, open and willing, so close to his own servo.

“Do you think that’s a fair deal, Whirl?” Rung asked. When Rung used his designation it was warm-- warm and fond and loving in such a courteous and _old fashioned_ way that he couldn’t help but simulate a scoff. Whirl shifted his arm, allowed his talons to fall across the palm of his hand as if they had landed there by careless coincidence. Rung closed his fingers carefully around his talon and he felt the fondness in his spark escape it’s chamber and dance through his nerves-- sparking at each point of contact, reminding him that this was far from the most insurmountable obstacle the two of them had faced.

“Yeah… yeah, okay,” Whirl said. “We’ve got a deal.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rung talks solutions. Whirl talks the unsolvable. There’s a whole mess of talk in general.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *casually slides an update over like it hasn't been months*
> 
> Noncanon Pronoun Version Here: http://archiveofourown.org/works/5279501/chapters/17629240

“Whirl,” Rung began, fingers still wrapped around his talon, determination and earnesty written on every line of his face. “I think it is important that we construct a plan outlining what we can do-- what _I_ can do-- now and in the future, to assure you that my affections are both sparkfelt and genuine.” His optics brightened as he leaned forward, but his tone of sincerity never faltered. “I imagine you’ll wish to put an immediate halt to our interfacing, or at least to our exploration of power exchange.” Whirl could taste the dregs of a half formed apology in his field. Guilt pinched his actuators taut. 

He shook it off. No. No self loathing, no _ruminating_. He and Rung had made a deal, and he had to at least _try_ to stick to it. He had to take that angry energy and put it into figuring out [[told you told you you knew it all along]] how to make his fragging processor calm down. 

“I’m not asking for that,” he muttered.

“I’m serious Whirl. I do not resent you for needing a respite from intimacy, from exploring your limitations and especially from public displays of affection. These things, they can be taxing, they-”

“That’s-” Whirl’s rotors spun in frustration. “That isn’t _all_ of it though. That doesn’t take care of the _problem_.”

“You... think it might be wiser for us to _separate_ for a while?” Rung asked. His exact glyphs were inordinately diplomatic (what else was new), but it was easy to read between the lines, to puzzle out what he actually meant. No more dates, no more bunting, no more _them_. Whirl’s helm shot up in alarm. 

“No no no, I’m not asking for _that_!” he snapped-- perhaps at a higher volume than he should have, judging by the way Rung startled. His composure was quickly regained, however, his scopes adjusted and brows furrowed as he recalculated his approach.

“Well, there are certainly many less drastic changes we can make. Eliminating degradation from our-”

“No. Change is…” He vented in a single harsh gust. There Rung went again, dancing at the edge of what Whirl needed to say and then [[mocking you laughing]] whipping off into another direction entirely. “Change is not what I need right now. Frag, it’s the _opposite_ of what I need right now.” 

“But... surely _something_ about how we’ve been conducting ourselves has exacerbated your concern?” he ventured. “I want to take immediate action to assuage your fears, Whirl.”

“But you _can’t_ ,” Whirl said, stomping a pede against the floor for emphasis.

“You have a rational fear,” Rung said in his sternest voice, field solid as a stone, so certain and yet so _completely_ off base. It struck Whirl as the worst Ultra Magnus impression he'd ever seen and somehow it made him painfully fond. “Rational fears,” he decreed, “have rational causes and thus rational solutions.” 

Rational fears? Rational _solutions_? That was just too much. Whirl couldn’t stop himself-- he threw his helm back and _cackled_. Rung startled in response to the sudden burst of static hiccoughs and whistling amusement, but to his credit, didn’t recoil. His field stayed extended and his hand remained steady on Whirl’s.

“Doc, have you _met_ me?” he asked, incredulous. “Okay, how do I explain-” his voxcoder trailed off into a soft hiss as his processor spun, trying to pin down the way his spark writhed at Rung’s suggestions. He needed one of those emotion wheels, the ones that he absolutely refused to download at Skimmer’s suggestion. Except he was pretty sure none of them accounted for scrap like this. Still, Rung showed no sign of withdrawing either his hand or his field. One benefit of dating a shrink: his patience had almost certainly been tested in far worse conditions than this.

“The problem here, the thing that’s really zapping me, is that my fritzing processor is way ahead of you, Doc,” he began at last. “It’s always ahead of _everything_. You’re saying ‘we can stop with the degradation’ and it’s thinking ‘oh right, ‘cause he’s already getting his fix just from hooking up with you isn’t he?’” 

Rung opened his mouth. 

“And before you suggest we stop hooking up,my brain’s got an angle for that too. It’s saying ‘now he can get off on everyone speculating about your ‘facing life without having to tolerate _actually_ making contact with your systems’”

Rung closed his mouth.

“I know that kink is a big one for you. Now that I know it, I can’t _un-know_ it. So it’s better if I know you’re getting your fill. It’s better if I can tell how and when that’s going on-- with me getting a heads up on how I play into it-- so that I don’t have to wonder how you’re buffing that scratch. And if you’re thinking of saying ‘Oh Whirl, this is precisely why we need to decree a mortuary on public bunting,’ that’s probably the _worst_ fracking thing we could do. That’ll just be iron clad proof to my blinking processor that you don’t _wanna_ be seen with the likes of me. And that’s- that’d be bad news for me. Very bad news. This scrap-” He shook his helm, offlined his optic. “You don’t know how manageable it is, in comparison to what it _could_ be. As slagged as it makes me feel, worrying you only frag me for kicks is the best problem I’ve had in a long time.”

Rung nodded slowly, a tentative gesture of understanding, before leaning back in his chair and resting his chin on his free hand. Whirl knew that pose, that tint of his field and his scopes. He was in full _focus mode_ , his processor working tirelessly [[always making him work overtime]] at the cipher [[burdensome burdensome what a weight]] that was Whirl’s own.

“I’m sorry Doc,” he muttered, “you’re trying to help and I’m shooting down everything you say.”

“There is no reason to apologise for that, Whirl,” he childed him gently, any threat of resentment eliminated when he broke into a smile that felt like a beam out of the matrix hitting him right in the spark. “It’s better for the both of us that we do not waste time exploring avenues you already know will be unsatisfying, or Primus-forbid _harmful_. If anything, I’d like to thank _you_ for your frankness. It is very helpful.” 

“I mean,” Whirl reset his voxcoder, fiddled his pedipalps in badly disguised bashfulness, “it’s not like I’m an expert, I’m not the one with a _doctorate_ in brains. It’s just that after all this time it’s inevitable I’d manage to figure _something_ out about how my processor keeps fragging up my life.”

“Well, you’re certainly right. ‘Doctorate in brains’ or not, you’re the one living with the situation.” Whirl didn’t really know what to say about that, so he just shrugged and flexed his claws-- making careful revrent note of the resistance from the weight of Rung’s hand still upon them. “So, if we keep everything going the way it was before-”

“Honestly Doc,” he blurted-- another interruption, thank Primus Rung didn’t resent being cut off. “The _worst_ thing that could come out of this would be us not doing scrap we both wanna do just because my feelings got in the way.” Whirl examined the sting of pain this thought conjured, trying to find glyphs that could approximate its scope, its intensity, the shape of the thing. “It would make me feel like _dross_ , that I glitched out and ruined a perfectly good thing. And worse, it’ll mean that it’s only a matter of time before I ruin everything _else_ with my fritzing brain. This scrap-- this thing where I’m making up every worst scenario five steps ahead of myself-- is gonna keep happening. I’m not going to just… get fixed one day. This is a fight that’s gonna follow me around.”

At first his proclamation was met only with silence, Rung lost in careful and quiet contemplation. If he hadn’t had the anchor of his hand, his field, he might’ve been unravelled by that. But he held fast, allowing himself to be lost in his presence, the small twitching movements of his frame. 

“I can’t win that battle for you.” Rung said, breaking the silence. “I should- I _will_ respect that. But I still want to be your ally.” His gaze flickered briefly to meet Whirl’s. “I want help you access the resources which you need to stay in the fight. I might not know what those are, at least not yet, but I am willing to learn.”

“I don’t think I can win this battle either,” he confessed.

“That’s okay,” Rung said-- as if it _was_ , as if it could _ever_ be.

“You sure you want to get tangled up in _another_ endless civil war?” Whirl punctuated his question with a sick laugh. “You might remember we just finished up the last one, and at least we had Optimus Prime on our side that time.” A confession hastily disguised as a joke. A weak alibi-- they both knew it-- but Rung laughed anyway.

“I’m _sure_ ,” he insisted.

Rung shifted his position, taking his hand away from his servo and bringing it close to his thorax, fingers tapping briefly in synch at the center of his spark window. Then he leaned forward-- both hands reaching towards his claws, and carefully interlaced his fingers with them. The blades of his talons pressing into the gaps between his first and second, third and fourth fingers. There was a long and beautiful moment in which they both stared at the tangle of their servos with whirling sparks in reverent silence.

Until of course, Whirl had to break it.

“So, uh, there’s something I wanna ask you.”

“Please do.” Rung’s smile was tender, as if nothing would please him more.

“Mostly I’m trying to figure out why it…” he flexed his claws [[so easy just to squeeze they’d all pop off you’ve done it before]], carefully. “Why it doesn’t at least _bother_ you, to look at the fracking mess the Senate made of me. If it’s not a fetish, then what is it? It bothers _everyone_. That’s the whole _point_. That’s why they _did it_.”

“I… Yes, I think I can explain that to you. Some of it at least.” Rung paused, humming softly for a moment, optics dimmed as if sifting through files. “You will remember, I’m sure, that the Senate claimed that empurata was an ancient tradition, dating back to the Knights. Out of practice since the close of the First Reign of Primes, but as integral to Cybertronian society as the Underbase. They claimed that empurata disturbed on some instinctual, deep coded level, that this was its very purpose.” Rung glanced towards his helm as if waiting for permission to continue. Whirl had more or less known _most_ of that, so he nodded, and Rung continued. “Well that’s a bunch of burning, dross-soaked slag.”

Whirl giggled at the novel delight of hearing Rung use not just one but several rude words, which made Rung’s biolights flush and his mouth crack into a wide grin.

“Is that your official, _scientific_ conclusion, Doc?” he asked.

“Yes, actually. My primary area of interest has long been in the collective unconscious, so called ‘deep coding’ was of particular interest to me. I did numerous studies with both uncured protoforms and the newly sparked [1] in order to test popular claims about mechanologically ingrained responses and capabilities. As basic reflex development had already been well documented I was able to use simple measures-- electromagnetic charge, optic tracking, kibble response, and such-- to determine the onset of certain social responses.”

“So…?” Whirl prompted through the jargon.

“So, my findings were that ‘Empuratee-Style’ faces and servos do not provoke recoil responses until approximately one week’s age, _after_ social integration and mandatory cultural training has begun. I concluded that such responses were a learned prejudice, one that could potentially be unlearned. The Council labeled my theory meaningless conjecture, and claimed late onset was due to delays in integrating the Knowledge of Primus bestowed upon First Sparking. As you might imagine, my findings were not deemed worthy of publishing.” He vented, chewing his lip. “I considered releasing the information anonymously on the datanet anyway, but without any institution standing behind it or proof of my credentials or methods it would be mere hearsay. There are times when I wish I had released it anyway, backlash be dimmed. To this day I still hear ‘Medic Coding’ and ‘Seeker Instincts’ presented as truisms.” He tilted his helm, optical ridges pressing down on the tops of his scopes.

“This is not to say that bias against empuratees is a fabrication, just that it is not a naturally occurring response. I cannot claim to be free of prejudice-- Prima knows the Functionists did their best to hammer their bigoted views into even those of us who remembered a time before their _ilk_ took over-- but I have had numerous opportunities to unlearn my prejudice. Not just through my research, but in my personal life as well. During the mid and late Golden Age I used the shanix I earned from my work for the Council and my private practice to open a Wellness Clinic. The clinic provided low and no cost counseling, meeting spaces for advocacy and support groups, physical therapy, etcetera. Almost all of the mechen who utilized our service were from the Dead End, and many of them had been subject to empurata. Empuratees have long numbered among my patients, my clients, my colleagues, my allies, my mentors. It didn’t take long for it to lose its ‘shock value.’ The discomfort wore off. Not a very _exciting_ story, but there it is.”

Whirl mulled this over for a moment. Rung was right that it was a pretty boring answer, but in this case boring was good. In this case boring meant _credible_. 

But then again.

“I don’t remember seeing any Wellness Clinic in the Ends,” Whirl contributed, aiming for casual but coming off suspicious anyway. He would have added that he didn’t remember seeing any spindly psychologists either, but he'd seen the image captures he’d taken, and Rung had already established how unnoticeable he tended to be.

“Well, it wasn’t _in_ the Dead End as much as it was... more or less _adjacent_ to it. You couldn’t run a clinics in the Ends, the Senate wouldn’t allow it.”

“Hatchet had one.”

“Yes, that’s absolutely true. However, Ratchet’s clinic was… not exactly what you might call _legal_. I believe he had a permit to operate a detailing shop. A permit which he interpreted quite liberally. They let him get away with it since he was far too important and far too useful for them to simply disappear. I wasn’t quite so secure in my own status.”

“Huh,” Whirl contributed, mulling that over. “That hangs together pretty well. Or at least my processor isn’t immediately rejecting it. ‘Course, it’ll probably find some bit to be upset about eventually. After all, it still doesn’t solve the biggest mystery.” Rung hummed, tilting his helm curiously.

“I will be happy to discuss whichever ‘bit’ you wish, when the time comes, but I’m a bit unsure what you mean by ‘the mystery’?”

“Come off it Doc” Whirl synthesized a snort. “You know what I mean. The mystery of why a mecha like you, who is so _clearly_ out of my league-” 

Rung laughed at that, sudden and sharp, and for a split second the molten hate stirred inside his spark and Whirl fliched in fear of it. “ _I’m_ out of _your_ league?” Rung asked, the flash flood of mirth and incredulity that poured from his field thankfully offering Whirl just the smokescreen he needed to reign in his own reaction. “That’s what you think?”

“Well _yeah_. What, you’re seriously going to pretend you can’t _tell_?”

“I think I scored quite the catch with you.” Rung’s face said earnest, but he couldn’t [[liar]] rightly believe it, that he’d be _this_ oblivious to the obvious. “I think a lot of mechen would be jealous of my luck.”

“Come on Doc, we both know you could have anyone on the ship.”

Rung vented, a sort of sad amusement flickering in his optics. “Oh Whirl, has it truly never occurred to you that the mechen we share this vessel with are just as likely to consider me ‘unworthy of love’ as they might you?” 

“Uh...” 

No, Whirl could say with absolute certainty, he had never even conceived of such a thing. Rung was simply so _easy_ to love-- so kind and warm, so clearly special and so clearly worthy of protection and devotion and-

“What else am I,” Rung’s voice cut into his thoughts, his glyphs casual but his field swirling with a bitter wind that scraped over a fog of embarrassment, “but an antique with a pathological insistence on retaining an outdated and maladaptive frame? An alt disordered, functionless mecha who deceived his way into his function-- oversensitive, jumpy, cowardly, and _damaged_.”

“You aren’t-” Whirl’s engine revved so furiously that it almost drowned out the glyphs so rushed to reassure him with. He muffled it to the best of his ability, but his stabilizers were still lowered, his lines prickling with rage towards any mecha who would _dare_ think such things about his datemate. 

“I _am_ though,” Rung corrected, gentle as always. “I am all of those things. But they do not make me inherently unworthy of love. They can, however, make it somewhat difficult for me to find someone else to share affection with. The same is true of your flaws and divergences.” He shuttered his optics, took a brief moment to slow the rythm of his vents. “However, let us for a moment assume that you are correct, that I could have any mecha I pleased. Let us assume there are more than 200 mechs I could pick from to pursue partnership with. Would that not make it even _more_ significant that I chose _you_?”

“I asked _you_ out,” he pointed out.

“I said yes.”Rung countered, “I didn't have to say yes, you weren’t coercing me. I made a choice.”

Whirl’s spun his rotors with a noisy huff. Okay, point to Rung. “Even with all that dross you talked about being true, you could still do better than me.”

“No, I couldn't.” Rung said, firmly. “Firstly, because that’s a silly premise. A relationship is the interaction between two individuals, not a game you can win. There are no rankings or points, and dating a certain type of mecha isn’t an accomplishment over dating another. Secondly, because I _chose_ you. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks I _deserve_ , I am the one who decides who I pursue and who I accept. I have decided again and again that you, that being with you, was the best for me.” Rung smiled, and it was tender but it was also sharp, it was also defiant. It dared Whirl to argue with him. “Nothing could please me more than being here now. With you. I wouldn’t change anything.”

“But _why?_ ” he asked, voice like a creaking joint. “No one wants me around them _just because_. They want me because I can throw a punch. They want me because I’ll risk my aft where other mechen wouldn’t. They _tolerate_ me for my usefulness. They don’t want my _company_.” His voxcoder cracked as he thought of Roadbuster, of Springer-- as he thought of the last few times he'd felt he might’ve been more than a tool to someone. “So- so when you say that’s all you want, my processor comes up with all these dross theories, tryna figure out the _real reason_ why you’d keep me around. ‘Cause if I can figure that out, then I can...” Then he could keep doing it, whatever it was. Then he could make sure he stayed relevant, could make sure he stayed useful. Then things would make _sense_. Then things would be normal. “I know that ‘be _cause I want to_ ’ should be enough, but it isn’t. It has to be _more_ than that, or I’ll just end up tearing my fragging brain apart tryna understand what’s in it for _you_.” 

Rung hummed a steady tone, his pedes tapping against the floor, thinking.

“Remember when we first met?” he asked after a moment’s pause. “First _actually_ met, enough that I made an impression on you?” Whirl felt his optic threatening to fritz, pointed his helm stubbornly down to stare at the badge on his cockpit instead of his partner.

“Yeah?”

”You made an impression on me as well. I was attracted to your confidence, and your wit. In our brief conversation I judged you to be honest and direct, not fond of white lies. I appreciate that. You were curious about me, which I found flattering, and open about yourself, which I found refreshing. I quickly discovered that we had certain things in common-- past experiences, perspectives, outlooks. Things which can be difficult to find among the general population. Things which, I theorised at the time, might help us to connect with one another in a mutually beneficial way. In the physical realm of attraction, I generally prefer large partners, and you are not merely larger than me but larger than _most_ mechen on this ship. Being with someone with such a substantial frame gives me a sense of security. And I, ahm-- this doesn’t leave this room, but I might have a bit of a _thing_ for rotaries.” This last detail was admitted with a strangely apologetic flare of his field, his biolights pulsing softly.

“Aw don’t get embarrassed,” Whirl teased, tilting his helm up, the familiar territory of soothing Rung’s self consciousness easing some of the tension out of his actuators, “plenty of mechen have an alt type.”

“What’s your alt type?” Rung asked, voice casual despite the sting of insecurity Whirl could read in his dimmed [[might as well pull them out]] gaze. 

“I don’t have one.” he said. Now it was his turn to try his claw at impersonating Magnus’ authoritative sincerity. He couldn’t help but feel his rendition was an improvement on Rung’s.

Nonetheless, Rung didn’t seem entirely convinced. But before he could make with the reassurances, he was moving on.

“The point is, I found you attractive from the start. But my affection for you, my desire to continue our relationship, has become so much more than that. You've seen,” he hesitated, reset his voxcoder. “You have knowledge of certain aspects of my identity, aspects which normally lead others to treat me differently once they’ve come to light. But you _didn't_ treat me differently. You still don’t. You're funny.” He quirked a smile, and Whirl liked to imagine he was remembering a particular joke, that something he had said had put that glimmer in his optics. “We share an appreciation for craftsmanship. We balance each other out. You are able to do and say things which I myself am afraid to. You are observant-- you figure out things about people and their motives that would never occur to me. You are flexible and spontaneous in ways I am not. You are inspiringly resilient, and so much nobler than you realise. You are incredibly passionate, you make me feel as if I am the center of the universe.” With their frames so close together, Whirl could not just see through infrared but actually _feel his_ face heating. When he continued his voice was quieter, with strangely soft glyphs. “I’m not used to being wanted, or even noticed. I’m not used to being cared for. You do such _kind_ things for me, and you do it naturally, generously.” He looked up suddenly, focusing an intense gaze on his optic.

“Whirl, I know it’s hard for you to believe-- that so much has happened to convince you otherwise-- but I don’t see you as a collection of disadvantages, of things to make up for. I see you as a wonderful person, as a person I trust, who is able to make me extraordinarily happy. You have flaws, but so does everyone else.You accept me, with all my problems, all my drawbacks and imperfections. I want so much for you to know, and to _believe_ , that I accept you as well.”

“You're just saying that.” Whirl was aware that he was being petulant, but he wasn’t sure what else to say, his spark and his processor and his voxcoder weren’t even sure how to _respond_ to such an outpouring. He considered scoffing, would have if he’d been certain his traitorous voice wouldn’t turn it into something weak and honest instead. 

“And what would I be accomplishing if I was?” Rung asked, voice playful. “Ah yes, I'm saying you are attractive and desireable as part of a duplicitous conspiracy to trick you into considering the possibility that you are, in fact, attractive and desireable. A dastardly plot. Real _Starscream_ level stuff. So many layers.”

“Alright, alright. You can turn down the fragging sarcasm, I believe you,” Whirl said. 

And then he realised, with a start, that he _did_. 

“I believe you,” he repeated, in awe and excitement. “I believe you.” 

Rung grinned, scopes bright like the light of his very spark was pouring out of them. “I’m so very happy,” he murmured, squeezing his talons between his fingers. Whirl squeezed back, as gently as he could manage, ducking his helm to study their enmeshed servos, trying to commit the sight to memory before his processor could try to tear it down.

“Me too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1 Term for a protoform who has fully developed into adult state. It is said that mechen receive the “spark” of knowledge from Primus at this point. It can be compared to the difference between a fetus and a newborn. [ return to text ]

**Author's Note:**

> If you've enjoyed reading this, please consider leaving a review!
> 
> I'm posting this fic as I write each chapter. The bad news is, that means sometimes there will be long periods between updates. The good news is, that means your feedback has a very real effect on where the story goes, what it includes, and how fast I manage to write it!


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